TheChek News Flow

Proposal seeks to make boardroom revisions before athletic-apparel company chooses a new CEO

Lululemon founder Chip Wilson is initiating a proxy fight, nominating three director candidates to the board.

Wilson, holding a nearly 9% stake, seeks to remake the board before a new CEO is selected.

Lululemon’s stock has declined 45% this year, amid stagnating U.S. sales and increased competition.

Lululemon Athletica LULU founder Chip Wilson is launching a proxy fight at the athletic-apparel retailer in an effort to remake the company’s board while Lululemon searches for a new chief executive.

Wilson has nominated three director candidates to the company’s board, according to people familiar with the matter.

The nominees are former On Running co-CEO Marc Maurer, former ESPN Chief Marketing Officer Laura Gentile and former Activision CEO Eric Hirshberg, the people said.

Wilson isn’t trying to put himself back on the board, which might come as a surprise to some given his recent efforts to publicly target the company he started. He remains Lululemon’s second-biggest shareholder, with a nearly 9% stake, according to FactSet. (Vanguard is the largest holder.)

Activist investors often tap former company executives to help them shake up targets, but it is rare to see a founder of a company turning to a hostile approach such as a board fight.

Lululemon is in the midst of an identity crisis and earlier this month said that its CEO, Calvin McDonald, will step down in January. Its stock is down 45% this year, while the broader market has rallied.

Pressure had been mounting for McDonald to turn around the business, including from Wilson, who had been publicly criticizing him and the company for killing innovation and “losing its cool.” Sales have recently stagnated in the U.S., with newer rivals such as Alo Yoga and Vuori eating at market share.

The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Wilson had tapped financial advisers and was considering waging a proxy battle before Lululemon’s nomination window closes at the end of this month.

Maurer, who stepped down as On Running co-CEO at the end of June, helped build a leading sportswear brand. Gentile founded ESPNW, ESPN’s brand dedicated to women. And Hirshberg oversaw top franchises including “Call of Duty” during his time at Activision, the largest segment of Activision Blizzard.

Wilson isn’t the only one pushing for change. Activist Elliott Investment Management has built a stake of more than $1 billion in Lululemon and is advocating for former Ralph Lauren executive Jane Nielsen to be the next CEO, the Journal reported last week.

Wilson has spoken to Nielsen, the people familiar with the matter said. While he understands the urgency to find a new CEO, the founder believes Lululemon shareholders won’t trust any CEO who is picked by the current board so wants to change the board first, the people added.

Wilson found his inspiration to start Lululemon in Vancouver, British Columbia, after attending a yoga class during the late 1990s. The $100 sweat-wicking leggings quickly developed a cultlike following among women who would wear them everywhere—from workouts to the grocery store.

He stepped aside as CEO in 2005, when he sold 48% of Lululemon to private-equity firm Advent International.

Lululemon went public in 2007 at a valuation of more than $1.2 billion. Advent has since sold out of its stake, though the firm still has a board seat.

Wilson remained chairman and held other roles at the retailer in the ensuing years. Controversial comments around quality control that he made in a 2013 television interview led him to apologize and step down from his chairman position later that year.

Wilson left Lululemon’s board entirely in 2015, later saying that he chose to leave because he didn’t feel that he could speak up against management. Four Lululemon CEOs have cycled through since Wilson left the job.

By the time he departed, Lululemon had nearly 300 retail stores around the world.

Wilson’s experience building brands has led him to other opportunities in retail. In 2019, he was part of a consortium that bought Amer, whose brands include Salomon and Arc’teryx. The company went public last year and its stock is up more than 35% this year, with a market value of over $21 billion.

Mining groups lose licences as resource-rich African states seek bigger share of profits

Guinea’s second-largest bauxite producer has launched a $29bn arbitration case against the West African government.

United Arab Emirates-based Axis International said it had initiated the case before the World Bank following the “illegal revocation” of its mining permit in Guinea this year, when it said the government had also seized its mining equipment and frozen its bank accounts.

Guinea is the world’s biggest exporter of bauxite, the main ingredient of aluminium, producing about a third of the globally mined material, according to the US Geological Survey. 

However, the Guinean government has revoked a swath of licences this year across its gold, bauxite, diamond, graphite and iron sectors as the government of President Mamadi Doumbouya seeks to extract more value from the country’s significant mineral resources.

Doumbouya, who came to power in a 2021 coup, forced companies from China, Singapore and the Anglo-Australian miner Rio Tinto to work together to complete the $23bn Simandou iron ore mine, rail and port project.

His government has made it a requirement that Simandou and other mining projects move to carrying out pelletisation, which turns iron ore into higher-value pellets, and eventually refining locally as part of a programme — known as Simandou 2040 — to use natural resources to develop the country.

Doumbouya, who is seeking to legitimise his leadership through elections held on Sunday, has made the resource issue central to his presidential campaign.

Guinea’s more assertive actions are part of a broader resource nationalism trend in the region.

In neighbouring Mali, Barrick Mining in November reached a deal to end a long-running dispute with the government that had led to the company losing control of one of its most productive assets.

Many resource-rich countries have stepped up their efforts to capture more of the value from the mining industry this year, as nations throughout the world renew their interest in critical minerals.

Analysts at BMI said this month that they expected the Guinean government to demand that more bauxite processing occur in the country and predicted a “full-scale ban on bauxite exports by Guinea as a high-probability event in 2026”.

Bouna Sylla, Guinea’s mining minister, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Axis. But in an interview with the Financial Times in November he said that companies that breached agreements would be penalised.

Sylla objected to the term “expropriation” in relation to the revocation of an agreement with Emirates Global Aluminium, which ran a bauxite mine in the country, saying it had failed to meet a stipulation that it build an aluminium refinery. Companies that complied with agreements had nothing to fear, he said.

Axis said it was seeking at least $29bn in damages in relation to its bauxite mine in the western Boké region, about 150km from the capital Conakry. The arbitration is being managed by the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes, an arm of the World Bank.

Axis International owns 85 per cent of Axis Minerals Resources — which held the local permit — while the Guinean state owns the remaining minority stake. The mine is operated by a local partner, Alliance Guinéenne de Bauxite d’Alumine et d’Aluminium.

Axis said it had filed the lawsuit on Christmas Day after the government had “ignored multiple attempts at settlement discussions”.

The company said it had lost its permit for the bauxite mine in May “without notice to or discussion with Axis Minerals or its shareholders”. Lawmakers had claimed to be targeting “non-operational or underutilised mines”, the company said.

However, Axis said its mine had been exporting mined material since 2020, and in 2024 had been the country’s second-largest producer of bauxite ore exports.

Before its licence was revoked this year, Axis had been on track to produce 48mn tonnes in 2025, it said. 

Axis International’s founder, Pankaj Oswal, said the company had contributed “materially to Guinea’s economy” since entering the country in 2013.

Vasundhara Oswal, director-general of Axis International, said the mine supported 5,000 direct and indirect workers and their families in Boffa, an area of Boké. “The sudden termination of the permit has had a direct and damaging impact on the people,” she said.

Samvardhana Motherson said in late August that it planned to acquire an 81% stake in Yutaka Giken

Swiss asset manager GAM Holding GAM 3.86%increase; green up pointing triangle is opposing a planned takeover of a Honda subsidiary by Indian auto-parts maker Samvardhana Motherson International, saying the deal significantly undervalues the Japanese company.

GAM Chief Executive Albert Saporta said the asset manager sent a letter to the president of auto-parts maker Yutaka Giken, urging the Honda unit to either abandon the transaction or seek a significantly higher price.

Samvardhana Motherson said in late August that it planned to acquire an 81% stake in Yutaka Giken for about 27 billion yen, equivalent to $172.4 million.

As part of the deal, Samvardhana Motherson plans to start a tender offer to buy Yutaka shares for 3,024 yen each from minority shareholders, valuing the company at about 45 billion yen.

Hamamatsu-based Yutaka is a profitable, cash-rich company and makes parts used in exhaust systems, drive systems, brake discs and heat-management devices. It had about 104 billion yen in net assets as of the end of September, with equity at 61% of assets.

Saporta said that the tender offer price should be at least 50%-70% higher than the current offered price and that the deal is a big step backward for Japan’s recent efforts to improve corporate governance.

Saporta said that GAM funds held shares in Yutaka Giken since before Samvardhana Motherson announced its tender offer plan and that GAM isn’t opposed to the sale of Yutaka Giken itself. He said the acquisition of Yutaka could enable Samvardhana Motherson to realize significant synergies and additional revenue opportunities.

Yutaka, Motherson and Honda didn’t immediately respond to requests for comments.

A number of Japanese companies in recent years have taken full control of listed units and affiliates or sold them as the Japanese government has pressed them for higher capital efficiency and better corporate governance. That created waves of acquisitions in Japan by domestic and foreign investors.

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Whether you consider Elon Musk a visionary or a liar, he has a long record of publicly setting aggressive deadlines that his companies don’t meet. Barring any big breakthroughs over the next few days, the 2025 list will include high-profile promises on robotics manufacturing, robotaxis and AI models that fell short.

On one hand, that’s business as usual for the Musk companies. But the stakes have risen drastically as investors have propelled Tesla, SpaceX and xAI valuations higher.

One of the most critical areas to Musk’s success is Tesla’s autonomous taxi service and self-driving software, given declining demand for its electric vehicles. Tesla will report fourth quarter delivery figures Friday. Analysts expect they will show 2025 has been the second full year in a row of falling vehicle deliveries.

Musk has repeatedly walked back or missed self-imposed 2025 targets for Robotaxis and other self-driving vehicles, putting Tesla further behind Alphabet’s Waymo.

In July, Musk said he expected Tesla’s Robotaxi service to be available to half the U.S. population by the end of 2025, “subject to regulatory approvals.” Then in October, Musk dialed back his Robotaxi goal to launching in eight to 10 U.S. metro areas by the end of 2025. But as of late December, Tesla still has not expanded Robotaxi outside of Austin and San Francisco, and still has human supervisors in all customer rides in both cities, according to reports from users.

Waymo, meanwhile, has been offering rides without backup drivers in five cities. The company has far more autonomous taxis than Tesla, all of them without backup people, running in both Austin and San Francisco.

Musk also made audacious promises about the self-driving software in private Tesla vehicles this year. In April, he promised a massive technological leap in Tesla‘s driving software in 2025, saying drivers in many U.S. cities would be able to “go to sleep in your car and wake up at your destination” by the end of the year. That has not been the case—Tesla’s driving software still requires supervision from drivers.

To be sure, Musk blowing through deadlines for Tesla self-driving is nothing new. The habit hasn’t stopped investors from pouring dollars into Musk’s vision. Tesla shares are up 27% this year. His $1 trillion compensation package, contingent on hitting financial and product goals for self-driving software and robotaxis, was overwhelmingly approved last month by shareholders.

Elsewhere at Tesla, the company has fallen short of production goals for its Optimus humanoid robot, which Musk has said will one day account for the vast majority of the company’s value.

In March, Musk said that Tesla would produce 5,000 Optimus robots by the end of 2025. Tesla then slashed its production goal to 2,000 before cutting it further. It also delayed expanding production of Optimus due to technical challenges, especially issues with its hands.

Musk and SpaceX have also said that in 2026 Optimus will go to Mars aboard SpaceX’s Starship. SpaceX’s website still says the mission is on track for next year and features renderings of Optimus walking on Mars. However, Musk has been downplaying the chances that such a mission to Mars will happen. In August, he said there was a “slight chance” that a Starship “crewed by Optimus” could happen in November or December 2026, but said that three-and-a-half years into the future was a more likely target.

In recent months, Musk has been talking less about Mars and more about data centers in space and near-term missions to the Moon, a key priority for the Trump administration.

Musk has also spent much of 2025 working on xAI, the AI company that is racing to catch up to OpenAI and Google. In July, xAI released Grok 4, its latest flagship model, in July. Then in August, Musk promised on X that xAI would follow it up with Grok 5, another “crushingly good” model, before the end of the year. But in November, Musk said that Grok 5 would instead be released in the first quarter of 2026.

As Musk has increasingly focused on xAI, he’s spent less time on the social media service X, formerly known as Twitter.

In January, then-X CEO Linda Yaccarino said that X would launch a payments service called X Money later in 2025 through a partnership with Visa, teasing it as the “first of many big announcements about X Money this year.” In March, X was acquired by xAI, and in July, Yaccarino stepped down.

While X says it’s still moving forward with X Money—an executive named Dhruv Batura is now leading the project—the company has yet to win approval from New York’s state financial regulator, a key hurdle if the company wants to launch it as a nationwide service. The regulator has raised concerns to X staff about the service’s proposed design.

In December, Musk gave a brief update on X Money, saying in a post that it “has been launched internally.” But he did not say when it would be available to the public. X Money’s X account still says it is “launching in 2025” but has not made any posts since January.

The chart shows how most companies made progress in one or more areas of the AI stack.

• For as much as we and others write about the intense competition among companies on this list, they are as interconnected as ever.
• Google was already the most well-rounded of the bunch when we published our chart in 2024, and that’s still true in the 2025 version. During the past year, Google’s prowess in AI server chips jumped. Anthropic put in a $20 billion order for Google tensor processing chips and Meta Platforms is seeking to sign a deal to use Google TPUs as well. Google has taken steps to sell TPUs to other cloud providers for the first time. It’s also become clear that these chips help Google save a lot of money in powering its AI, according to employees of rivals such as OpenAI.
• The only other notable progress in server chips came from Microsoft, which continues to develop its Maia chips, though it remains behind most rivals.
• In the 2024 chart, we had already considered Google’s large language models to be state-of-the-art. The company proved it again in 2025 with Gemini 3, which like Google’s other models was trained on TPUs.
• Meta made gains in developing AI-powered devices with its Meta glasses, and it’s far ahead of rivals such as Apple, albeit in a tiny market.
• xAI made gains in both LLM quality and with its Nvidia-powered training clusters, though its LLMs still lag behind Google, OpenAI and Anthropic by most real-world measures.
• We also showed gains for xAI in consumer AI apps. XAI’s Grok powers key features for the X app and has improved the experience for many users—especially in deciphering posts on X that would otherwise make no sense to half the people reading them. Grok also appears to have made inroads with people who want to use a chatbot for adult content.
• Elon Musk’s other company, Tesla, appears to be in the lead in humanoids among the biggest AI firms on our list, though the “hands problem” and other issues persist with its Optimus machines.
• Anthropic’s products have been booming, according to its unreleased financials, and our chart reflects its progress with both businesses and individual customers.

• Meta has lagged in developing its own state-of-the-art models, as Llama 4 failed to deliver big performance gains and compete against AI model incumbents. The company spent much of the year paying up to acquire talent to turn things around, so we expect it to improve in this regard in 2026.
• Nvidia stepped back from competing head-on with Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure through a recent reorganization, though it hasn’t completely left the market.

For as much as we and others write about the intense competition among companies on this list, they are as interconnected as ever, as this chart shows.

OpenAI’s focus in 2025 was to expand its cloud relationships far beyond Microsoft, which has been its primary provider. For instance, Amazon struck a deal to provide $38 billion worth of servers, and possibly lots of cash, to OpenAI, while OpenAI plans to work with Amazon on commerce initiatives. (OpenAI announced even bigger cloud deals with Microsoft Azure and Oracle Cloud.)

Microsoft, meanwhile, struck a major deal to rent out Nvidia servers to Anthropic. Meanwhile, it is also buying Anthropic models for its products, such as Office 365 Copilot, even though it can get OpenAI models for free through its multifaceted partnership with the ChatGPT maker.

As the chart shows, Google is now a tech provider to at least five companies it also competes with. In 2025, Google struck a deal to power Siri queries for its longtime business partner Apple. (That effectively replaces the role currently held by OpenAI, but it appears to have had little effect on OpenAI’s business.) Google had previously rented out TPUs and other cloud servers to Apple developers, which is why we didn’t highlight that box in the chart as a new entry.

Google is also working on a deal to provide TPUs to Meta, another longtime business partner. And Google in 2025 started providing Nvidia-powered servers to OpenAI in a big way, leaving open the possibility it will someday sell or rent out TPUs to OpenAI too.

Billionaire family lays out almost €200mn on three properties, among top prices paid in French capital over past year

The billionaire Arnault family has splurged almost €200mn on a trio of Parisian properties in little over a year, providing a boost to the sluggish luxury housing market in the French capital.

The purchases include two properties in the chic seventh arrondissement: a €58mn townhouse in December 2024 and a 17th-century mansion for €97.5mn in March 2025.

The family, spearheaded by LVMH chief executive and patriarch Bernard Arnault, also acquired a €44mn triplex apartment in the affluent 16th arrondissement in May 2025. A listing for the property details a luxurious reception room with marble fireplace, boiserie wall panelling and large French doors leading to a 1,425 square-metre garden.

The transactions were among the top prices paid in Paris over the past year, according to a person familiar with the matter. A €62.5mn property purchased by music producer Pharrell Williams, who is also men’s creative director at Louis Vuitton, was also near the top of the list.

High-value transactions have helped boost a luxury housing market staging a gradual recovery from the impact of higher interest rates, which dented sales in 2023 and 2024, multiple Paris property agents told the Financial Times.

“In 2025, after two very complex years, finally we are seeing the slope of interest rates returning in the other direction . . . which is making quite a number of buyers come back to the market,” said Laurent Demeure, chief executive of luxury property agency Coldwell Banker Europa.

However, several luxury estate agents said French political uncertainty and the threat of new wealth taxes was deterring some would-be buyers.

“We have quite a number of well-off Parisian clients who have decided to put their property on sale in order to leave,” said Richard Tzipine, chief executive for France of the Barnes property agency. “I don’t know if they will really leave, but in any case it’s true that there are sales listings.”

The Arnaults’ total €199.5mn outlay, confirmed by documents seen by the Financial Times, comes as industry leader LVMH makes a tentative recovery after a significant slowdown in sales across the luxury market over the past few years.

The Arnaults remain one of the world’s wealthiest families despite a dip in the share price of the luxury group they control since a pandemic-era boom in demand for luxury goods. LVMH’s shares staged a partial recovery in 2025 as the outlook for the sector has brightened.

The purchases add to the Arnaults’ already substantial Parisian property portfolio, which includes more than 10 other town houses and apartments.

LVMH and the Arnault family declined to comment.