TheChek News Flow

European nuclear start-ups shift focus to US in search for funding

American investors galvanised by possibilities of technology they hope can power expected AI boom

Europe’s cutting-edge nuclear start-ups are preparing to switch operations to the US as they seek deeper financing and stronger government support, warning they are losing out to well-resourced rivals in the race to develop the technology. 

President Donald Trump’s enthusiasm for the sector, and the potential of a new generation of small modular reactors (SMRs), has galvanised US investors’ interest in the possibilities for technology they hope can power the expected AI boom. 

This has helped fuel eye-popping valuations for some US nuclear developers, and helped others to raise hundreds of millions of dollars, far exceeding the sums available in Europe, where some start-ups have struggled with liquidity. 

European developers of advanced nuclear reactors told the FT that moving some parts of their business to the US or setting up new operations there was imperative if they wanted to stay in what has also become a global fight against Chinese developers.

Newcleo, a Franco-Italian start-up developing lead-cooled reactors that use nuclear waste as fuel, is eyeing the US for “a third of our deployment”, including a possible fuel fabrication site in South Carolina. 

Chief executive Stefano Buono said the US would replace the UK in its plans, having opted to abandon the British market last year.

“In the UK we had zero support, and no financial support,” Buono said. “The government was not really backing advanced modular reactors, they started supporting the third generation, not the fourth generation.”

Aerospace, defence and energy company Rolls-Royce has been selected by the UK to build a future fleet of reactors and has funding pledges as a result, but its designs use the older pressurised water reactors rather than more experimental technology. 

“It’s clear [the US] are strongly supporting advanced nuclear in a way that Europe is not,” said Kiki Lauwers, chief executive of Franco-Dutch developer Thorizon, another company seeking to tap the booming North American market.

Lauwers pointed to hefty US energy department subsidies for American nuclear companies such as Amazon-backed X-energy or Bill Gates’ TerraPower — the latter received $2bn to fund its first reactor — matched by large private fundraisings. Europe lacks the capital depth to do the same, she added.

French nuclear start-up Naarea struggled to raise funding and went into receivership last September — a procedure to protect it from creditors. A court will this week rule on a buyout offer from Luxembourg and Poland-based waste treatment group Eneris, leaving its next steps in the balance.

Chief executive Jean-Luc Alexandre had been eyeing moving operations to the US, telling the FT late last year that was where nuclear companies could “go faster”.

The company, which aims to use liquid salt as a reactor coolant, raised an initial €100mn from family offices in France and a further €10mn from a French government scheme in 2023. But it had estimated its funding needs at €2bn.

“Europe is not where it needs to be on this right now,” Alexandre said.

Europe is home to one of the world’s top nuclear operators, France’s EDF, which built dozens of large reactors between the 1970s and 1990s. French SMR developers and related suppliers account for the biggest chunk of members of a 350-strong European SMR alliance.

Industrial companies and data centres are pinning their hopes on powerful but easily replicable small reactors to fuel their electricity needs and plans to reduce emissions.

But even in France, the state has earmarked about €1bn in funding for nuclear start-ups, when advanced reactor developers need about €1bn each, according to French energy regulator estimates.

Christophe Grudler, a lawmaker in the European parliament, said more EU financing would become available in the coming months for nuclear research and prototypes with project-based funding.

He also noted that while Europe might be slower to advance, it did so meaningfully. “The Trump of one day may not be the Trump of tomorrow. Europe’s a reliable partner,” he said. 

But some European start-ups courting the US said they had already seen a pay-off. “The moment we said we were going to do operations in the US, our own existing investors started to put in more money,” said Newcleo’s Buono.

He warned that the next two years would be crucial for the sector, as prototypes were built out and expanded, and that many businesses might not survive.

“It’s a challenging phase, a sort of death valley,” Buono said. “A lot of companies fail to deliver in this phase.”

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EVs central to carmakers’ Europe strategy despite petrol ban easing

Benefits of EU’s proposed rule changes are limited and too costly, say industry executives

Global car executives will continue to place electric vehicles at the centre of their European product strategy after Brussels granted only “very small flexibility” in its revision of the 2035 petrol ban.

“We are on a transition to EVs,” Sjoerd Knipping, chief operating officer of Kia Europe, told the FT in an interview.

The changes in the EU’s regulations “could give us a bit more flexibility here and there, but it doesn’t mean that we are going to turn over our strategy from one day to the next”, he said at the Brussels Motor Show, where the South Korean carmaker unveiled its cheapest and smallest electric car, expected to be priced at less than €30,000. 

Last month, Brussels proposed scrapping a law forcing carmakers to cut their emissions to zero by 2035. Although the loosening of the petrol ban sparked fears among environmental groups that carmakers would slow their shift to EVs as in the US, industry executives cautioned that the changes proposed by the EU were limited and too costly to implement.

While carmakers will be allowed to carry on releasing 10 per cent of their 2021 emissions and to continue selling some petrol engines and hybrids, the European Commission has mandated that the emissions be offset by using low-carbon steel and sustainable fuels. 

One car executive estimated that the stringent conditions implied that manufacturers would only be allowed to release about 3 per cent of their 2021 emissions.

“Our strategy in terms of product remains the same,” said Bruno Vanel, head of product at Renault. He stressed that the French carmaker would continue developing affordable EVs alongside other options such as hybrids and range-extended EVs using small backup fuel engines.

“The direction is clear towards EVs. That’s for sure. It doesn’t change,” he added.

Antonio Filosa, the chief executive of Stellantis, has sharply criticised the recent proposed changes in EU climate policy, saying Brussels had not gone far enough to revitalise the European car industry which is under pressure from EV transition costs.

Emanuele Cappellano, the new head of the group’s European operations, said more flexibility was needed to provide a wide range of products not only to meet consumer needs but also to maintain production volumes across the continent. 

Still, Cappellano said that the company was “not claiming for a comeback to a combustion engine”.

Critics of the EU’s latest easing of the 2035 ban have pointed to the risk of western car manufacturers falling behind Chinese rivals, who have already made significant advances into Europe with more affordable EVs equipped with advanced software.

In 2025, sales of electric cars in Europe rose 31 per cent from a year earlier to a record 2.9mn vehicles, accounting for 24 per cent of the bloc’s new car market, according to research firm Benchmark Mineral Intelligence.

Among the Chinese brands, Zeekr, the EV unit of Geely, said it would continue to push for expansion of EV offerings in Europe this year.

“It’s obvious that the better technology is EV . . . it’s just that the entire industry needs to accept that and put the right focus and balance on it,” said Lothar Schupet, acting chief executive of Zeekr Europe.

Ermotti’s UBS legacy leaves space for a third act

Why would someone like the Swiss banker step away just when things are about to get fun?

Boomerang executives are normally a sign of a company in crisis. Sergio Ermotti’s return to UBS in 2023 was a classic case, with the Swiss banker coming back to lead the difficult integration of Credit Suisse in the biggest bank deal since the 2008 financial crisis. As he prepares to take flight again, however, Ermotti may have set himself up for a third stint that begins on more positive terms.

Ermotti is planning to step down as chief executive next year. The foursome of internal candidates fighting to replace him includes wealth management co-heads Iqbal Khan and Robert Karofsky, chief operating officer Bea Martin and asset management chief Aleksandar Ivanovic. Already, however, people close to the bank whisper that Ermotti could be back again within a few years to replace Colm Kelleher as chair.

His performance bolsters the case. The integration of Credit Suisse has, so far, been surprisingly smooth, while UBS’s wealth management franchise remains the envy of European rivals. Plans to boost profitability in the US by getting a full banking licence probably won’t pay off by the time Ermotti and Kelleher are holding job interviews — a shame for Americas head Karofsky — but performance should improve over time.

A share price increase of 114 per cent since Ermotti was announced as second-time CEO is actually an underperformance relative to an index of European bank stocks, but the weakness was largely due to aggressive Swiss regulatory proposals that were outside his control. The Swiss government wants UBS to raise tens of billions of dollars of extra capital to reduce the risk of a future crisis.

The next chief will have to deal with implementing the final changes. Even a compromise solution that limits the cost to UBS will be a challenge at a time when most international rivals are benefiting from looser rules. But at least the uncertainty should be largely over, making it an execution issue rather than a diplomatic fight.

Meanwhile, the strong state of UBS’s underlying businesses will give it more freedom to pursue the sort of exciting plans that were previously off the table, such as trying to speed up US expansion with a big acquisition. That could make another Ermotti return more likely: investors would surely be reassured to have someone around with his experience of large integrations.

Less ambitious executives might prefer to follow a combined 13 years in charge with a permanent vacation. But after a decade and a half of restructuring, UBS could soon be on the front foot for a change. And the original purpose of a boomerang, after all, is for hunting. Why would someone like Ermotti retire just when things are about to get fun?

Record-breaking estate sales mask the real, and sometimes declining, value of art

The supply of art for auction has long relied on what are known as the three Ds: debt, divorce and death. In recent years, the latter has dominated as a certain breed of collector — notably the self-made millionaires who bought art during the US golden age of the 1950s and 60s — reached the end. 

“What is new is the scale, in volume and value,” says Caroline Sayan, president and CEO of the art advisers Cadell North America. Previously at Christie’s for 25 years, she oversaw estate sales including the $835mn collection of Peggy and David Rockefeller in 2018, the year after the industrialist heir died. “Think of it as like planes landing. Before this time, there were smaller jets, individual planes, and it was easy to manoeuvre. Then, all of a sudden, these jumbo jets started coming in,” she says.

Statistics from the analysis firm ArtTactic show that in 2018, single-owner collections — predominantly estates — accounted for $2.1bn (17 per cent) of auction totals, up from $820mn (7 per cent) in 2017. Since then, totals and percentages have surpassed this, with single-owner collections averaging $2.6bn in value and accounting for 23 per cent of auction sales in 2021-2025.

The impact on the market and its all-important mood is notable. In 2022, the year of the record-breaking $1.6bn sale of works from the collection of Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, art sales as a whole, including from the private dealer sector, were at their highest level for eight years, according to the Art Basel & UBS Art Market report. Last year’s bounce into the black was helped by the $527mn sale of art from the cosmetics heir Leonard Lauder. 

When such collections come to market, buyers tend to pay a premium for the pull of the previous owner — and the auction houses have proved adept at the storytelling that boosts this. The halo effect of provenance can be seen on a broader and more pronounced scale at celebrity sales, such as the 2023 auction of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury. It included items such as a silver moustache comb from Tiffany, estimated between £400 and £600, which sold for £152,400. At the other end of the scale, at the Rockefeller auction, a late Monet water lily painting, estimated at $50mn, sold for $85mn.

Such inbuilt inflation, and the tendency for such auctions to sell out, arguably masks the real, and sometimes declining, value of art. Sayan says that, for those in the know, “one major sale by Claude Monet, doesn’t lift all his work; Monet isn’t a stock.” But, she says, “it can give confidence about the overall market, whether that is right or wrong.” 

The latest collection to boost the block comes courtesy of the late Belgian couple, Roger and Josette Vanthournout, whose 200-plus works will be offered at Christie’s in London in March, valued at about £40mn. Their names may not be as familiar as Rockefeller or Allen but, says Olivier Camu, Christie’s deputy chairman of impressionist and modern art, “they were very serious collectors and very well known in the art market. When they approached a gallery stand at, say, Art Basel, art dealers paid attention.” 

Works that the Vanthournouts once owned have already made a splash. Part of their collection came to auction at Sotheby’s, after Roger Vanthournout died in 2005. This included Francis Bacon’s ominous and fleshy “Version No. 2 of lying figure with hypodermic syringe” (1968), which sold for $15mn, then a record price for the artist. Josette Vanthournout kept the bulk of the collection, to live with in their Flanders home, which Camu describes as a “treasure trove”. She died last year and now their family is “selling it to the world,” Camu says. 

Highlights include René Magritte’s supersized leaf in a lonely mountainscape, “La plaine de l’air” (1940), estimated at £3.5mn-£5.5mn, and Max Ernst’s similarly barren “Seestück” (1921), estimated at £1.5mn-£2.5mn. About a third of the collection is in such surrealist and Dada works, Camu says, though there is also a cubist double portrait of Dora Maar by Pablo Picasso (“Nu debout et femmes assises”, 1939, £3mn-£5mn) and plenty of modern British art, including sculptures by Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Lynn Chadwick.

Estate sales are not without their challenges, Sayan says: “It isn’t so much that collections distort demand, but they can absorb it . . . They take up the calendar slots, marketing and so on.” Hence, estate sales with hundreds of items are rarely all live auctions — the Vanthournout sale will have about half of its works offered online for a couple of weeks, as well as in dedicated evening and day sales (March 5-6). 

The overflow of lower and mid-value collections can benefit auction centres outside of dominant New York — the Vanthournout sale is a boost for London — as well as the regional auction houses. Next month, London’s Olympia Auctions has more than 300 items, including art books, which belonged to the cultural critic and author John Russell Taylor, who died last year. The live auction has a combined estimate of about £200,000.

The challenges of an estate auction are exacerbated by a need for speed in what can be a slow-moving market. In the US, for example, “estate taxes are often due nine months after the date of death,” Sayan notes. Familial disagreements can add to the hastening, and estimates can be set relatively low when the aim is simply to sell. “Auctions resolve any problems of liquidity and prices are transparent, so the IRS [the US tax authority] can’t argue,” Sayan says. Estate lawyers are likely also attracted by the price gains of some of the art that was bought in the postwar period. The Vanthournouts’s £5.5mn Magritte was bought privately in the late 1960s, a time when such works “would cost less than £30,000”, Camu says. 

While there are only so many such estates, there seem to be enough to keep the market moving. The Great Wealth Transfer of trillions of dollars from the wealth creation generations has only just begun, Sayan notes. Josh Baer, an industry observer and private dealer, predicts that this year “at least four collections worth over $200mn will come to the auction market”. The recent deaths of respected collectors such as the New York banker-turned-gallerist Robert Mnuchin and the patron and philanthropist Agnes Gund are among those expected to keep the auction houses busy, while debt and divorce are not going away fast. Sayan says the specialists are primed to compete for the goods, in a still-hesitant market: “Strategic intent has moved from a game of chequers to a game of chess.”

Potential buyers dropped out of talks to buy Japanese agency’s underperforming international arm

Advertising group Dentsu’s efforts to sell its international operations are close to collapse after potential trade buyers and private equity suitors walked away from talks, in a development that is set to intensify pressure on the Japanese firm’s executives.

The FT reported last year that Dentsu was exploring the sale of its UK-based international business, which made more than $4.5bn in net revenues in 2024, as part of a strategic review.

Prospective buyers to have held discussions with Dentsu included major advertising groups and a range of private equity firms. But the last trade buyers and private equity firm Apollo dropped out of talks last year, said three people familiar with the matter, leaving only Bain Capital.

A person close to Bain said the US private equity firm was “still interested, but with significant reservations”. Apollo declined to comment and Bain did not respond to a request for comment.

However, Dentsu president Hiroshi Igarashi has informed board members that Bain was unlikely to continue with talks over a deal and that the sale process had fallen apart, according to people close to the advertising group’s top management.

Dentsu’s shares fell more than 10 per cent in Tokyo after Wednesday’s news.

Japan’s largest advertising agency is expected to tell investors at its full-year results meeting next month that its attempts to secure a sale have failed, the people added, and that the company would seek to turn around its struggling international operations on its own.

The group has already unveiled plans to restructure the international businesses, including cutting more than 3,400 jobs.

“With regards to the international business, the company is rebuilding the business foundation and re-evaluating underperforming businesses,” Dentsu said. “At the same time, the company is exploring strategic alternatives to enhance corporate value, but no decision has been made at this time.”

Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley and Nomura Securities have been advising Dentsu on the deal.

Dentsu, whose outsized control of the Japanese advertising market gives it significant influence within the country’s business and political circles, has struggled to project that dominance outside Japan.

The struggle to offload the international business follows repeated failures to turn around the operations and leaves the Japanese group confronting an increasingly dismayed investor base that includes Oasis, an often vocal activist shareholder.

A deal to sell the business would have unwound a £3.2bn transaction to acquire UK media group Aegis in 2012. Dentsu’s international operations also include London-based Tag Group, a digital marketing production company.

Two people close to Dentsu said the group feared shareholders might attempt to unseat Igarashi, who also serves as its global chief executive, by voting against his reappointment at the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting in March.

Potential buyers had deemed Dentsu’s international business too difficult to turn around given the downward trend in its performance, the people said.

One Dentsu shareholder said they had “little confidence” in the company’s ability to turn around the international business and that the whole group was suffering from an outdated approach to a market undergoing fundamental upheaval.

Dentsu is facing stiffer competition from the combination of IPG and Omnicom, which merged last year, and the growing dominance of Publicis.

Meanwhile, the traditional roles of advertising firms are being disrupted by the adoption of AI tools, which can carry out tasks faster, cheaper and often better than existing processes.

The deal would have meant a significant retrenchment for Tokyo-listed Dentsu, which has long held ambitions to compete with global rivals such as Publicis.

Igarashi told investors last summer he was “acutely aware that reforming the international business is an urgent issue . . . I deeply regret this situation and offer my sincere apologies on behalf of the company.”