- Santander (BSD2 TH) -1%
- Talanx (TLX TH) -1%
- Voestalpine (VAS TH) -1%
- Raiffeisen (RAW TH) -1.3%
- Adidas (ADS TH) -2.2%
- Nike’s Weakness in China, Converse Spur Growing Concern (2)
- Puma (PUM TH) -3.2%
- Nike’s Weakness in China, Converse Spur Growing Concern (2)
- Frontline PLC (HF6 TH) -3.4%
- Oil Heads for Second Weekly Decline as Glut Concerns Dominate
DAX:
- Adidas (ADS TH) -2.1%
- Nike’s Weakness in China, Converse Spur Growing Concern
MDAX:
- Hensoldt (HAG TH) +1.1%
- Marshall Wace Boosts Short Position in Hensoldt to 1.12%
- United Internet (UTDI TH) -1.1%
- Hugo Boss (BOSS TH) -1.1%
- Puma (PUM TH) -2.8%
- Nike’s Weakness in China, Converse Spur Growing Concern
SDAX:
- Medios (ILM1 TH) +1.7%
- Heidelberger Druck (HDD TH) -1.2%
- Douglas AG (DOU TH) -1.6%
Sony takes control of Snoopy in deal for majority of Peanuts brand
Japanese entertainment group raises stake in beloved US cartoon as it seeks to build out global franchises
Sony is taking a majority stake in the brand behind the Snoopy and Charlie Brown characters, handing the Japanese group control of a beloved US cartoon as it seeks to build out global entertainment franchises.
The company said on Friday that it would buy 41 per cent of Peanuts Holding, which owns the intellectual property created by cartoonist Charles Schulz, from Canada’s WildBrain for C$630mn (US$460mn).
The deal raises Sony’s total stake in Peanuts, which it began building in 2018, to 80 per cent, making it a subsidiary of the Japanese group. The Schulz family will continue to own the remaining 20 per cent, Sony said.
The deal is the latest move by Sony under a strategic shift to concentrate on entertainment and the creation of original content.
Sony is trying to stitch together its gaming, anime, film and music businesses to build global franchises. Big hits in recent years include The Last of Us, which was adapted from a PlayStation game into a popular television series, and the animated film Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba.
Peanuts, which first appeared as a comic strip in seven newspapers in 1950, has gone on to become a global household name, spawning toys, television specials, films and amusement park attractions.
“With this additional ownership stake, we are thrilled to be able to further elevate the value of the ʻPeanutsʼ brand by drawing on the Sony Groupʼs extensive global network and collective expertise,” said Shunsuke Muramatsu, chief executive of Sony Music Entertainment.
The character of Snoopy has a long history in Japan and was one of the inspirations for Hello Kitty, the global phenomenon owned by Sanrio, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, said Matt Alt, author of Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World.
“Peanuts has been incredibly popular in Japan since the 60s, and Snoopy’s popularity directly inspired the creation of Hello Kitty, so there is a great symmetry in seeing a Japanese company acquire the brand,” said Alt.
“Snoopy taught Japan of the power of cute animal characters, and now that Japan dominates that space globally, it makes sense for them to acquire the origin, so to speak.”
China boosts AI chip output by upgrading older ASML machines
Restricted chipmaking tools are being retrofitted to make advanced AI chips, exposing cracks in US-led export controls
China’s semiconductor manufacturers are upgrading their advanced chipmaking equipment in ways that bypass global export controls, as the country seeks to rival the US in developing artificial intelligence.
According to people familiar with the matter, Chinese fabrication plants producing advanced smartphone and AI chips have bolstered the performance of advanced deep ultraviolet lithography (DUV) machines made by Netherlands-based ASML.
US and Dutch export controls prevent ASML from supplying its most advanced DUV machines to China, leaving many Chinese fabs to rely on older equipment — notably the Twinscan NXT:1980i system — to manufacture the seven-nanometre chips needed to develop AI systems.
In industry parlance, “nanometres” denotes successive generations of chip, rather than physical dimensions.
According to those familiar with the techniques, Chinese fabs have obtained components on the secondary market. This includes an upgraded “stage”, a mechanical platform for the silicon wafer, as well as lenses and sensors that help ensure that chip layers are aligned with greater precision.
These improvements to ASML’s DUVs have enabled Chinese fabs to bolster their AI chip production.
China’s chipmakers Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC) and Huawei are among those known to be using older ASML machines to build seven-nanometre production lines — although it is unclear if they have secured further component upgrades.
The moves underscore how Chinese chipmakers are finding methods to overcome global export controls meant to stall the country’s technological rise.
The US has sought to apply curbs to stop China accessing cutting-edge chips, while pressuring governments in the Netherlands, South Korea and Japan to also tighten their sales controls. The American-led effort is designed to push companies across the global semiconductor supply chain to curtail business with Chinese customers.
Under this regulatory regime, ASML is allowed to provide engineering support for Chinese customers to service their existing equipment.
But the Dutch company is restricted from servicing upgrades to the “overlay”, or positioning accuracy of the DUV machines, or from making changes that improve the “throughput” — or speed — of the machines beyond 1 per cent.
Multiple people familiar with the arrangements said local fabs sourced components overseas and ship them to China. They said that third-party companies provided on-site engineering to upgrade existing DUV machines.
ASML said it “fully complies with all applicable laws and regulations . . . The company operates strictly within these legal frameworks and does not support system upgrades that allow customers to improve performance levels beyond what is permitted by law.”
Export controls also prevent ASML from supplying China with even more advanced extreme ultraviolet (EUV) machines.
That has led Chinese fabs to use techniques such as multiple DUV exposures — a process known as “multi-patterning” — to produce advanced chips. But the method demands longer machine run-times, increasing production costs and reducing “yield” — the percentage of functional chips.
Component upgrades had enabled the fabs to mitigate some of these constraints and raise output of AI and advanced smartphone chips, said those familiar with the matter.
Analyst group TechInsights said this month that SMIC continued to push the boundaries of this multi-patterning technique beyond the seven-nanometre process. It added that Huawei’s latest Kirin 9030 processor revealed China’s most advanced chip manufacturing process to date.
“Chinese fabs have been able to achieve impressive feats without full access to the best equipment available to others like TSMC and Samsung,” said TechInsights chief strategy officer Dan Kim.
The US Bureau of Industry and Security had been probing what support ASML has been providing to Chinese customers and had been preparing to make the rules stricter to stop it providing some servicing support permitted under the current rules, said two people familiar with the agency’s thinking.
It is unclear if BIS will push ahead with rule changes after the Trump administration signalled a truce in its trade war with Beijing.
ASML has lobbied against export controls on China, an important market and the world’s largest purchaser of wafer fabrication equipment in 2024.
Former chief executive Peter Wennink argued such curbs provided no additional security benefit for the west, since China already had the equipment it needed to make chips for military purposes.
China’s newest production lines are running ASML’s newer 2050i and 2100i DUV tools, which incorporate an upgraded stage mechanism.
The Dutch government revoked ASML’s export licence for both machines in September 2024, but only after numerous units had been shipped and installed.
ASML’s revenue from China has jumped as local chipmakers rushed to secure equipment before expected restrictions took effect.
In 2023, the company booked €7.2bn in China sales, accounting for 26 per cent of global revenue.
In 2024, that figure climbed to €10.2bn, or 36 per cent of total sales. It warned investors in October that sales to China would “decline significantly” next year.
BIS, SMIC and Huawei did not respond to requests for comment.
EU agrees €90bn loan to Ukraine after frozen Russian asset plan fails
Money to be borrowed against bloc’s budget after leaders fail to agree on proposal using Moscow’s funds
EU leaders have struck a deal to lend €90bn to Ukraine, borrowed against the bloc’s shared budget, after a proposal to use immobilised Russian sovereign assets collapsed.
The financial agreement represents a critical lifeline for Ukraine, and comes as Europe seeks to assert its right to influence US-led peace talks to end Russia’s almost four-year long war against Kyiv.
“We committed, we delivered,” European Council president António Costa said after the summit of EU leaders agreed the loan.
EU capitals have for months wrestled over using €210bn of cash belonging to Russia, most of which is held in Belgium, to back a so-called reparations loan for Kyiv.
Belgium had demanded expansive guarantees to cover any financial risk from the loan, which led other leaders to reject those terms, according to officials briefed on the discussions.
Ukraine has warned that it faces collapse in early 2026 without additional support. EU leaders had pledged not to leave the summit in Brussels without agreeing some form of financial aid.
“The absence of a decision would have been a disaster,” said French President Emmanuel Macron after the summit.
After more than 16 hours of discussions among EU leaders, they agreed in the early hours of Friday to raise a loan of €90bn on capital markets, secured against untapped spending in the bloc’s shared budget, to fund Ukraine for the next two years.
Ukraine will only have to pay back the loan after Russia has paid reparations. Russia’s assets would remain immobilised and could ultimately be used to repay the loan if Moscow does not pay reparations, Costa said.
Ukraine’s first deputy foreign minister Sergiy Kyslytsya welcomed the deal in a post on X, noting that it offered financial support his country “needs to keep protecting Europe while defending itself”.
“There are moments when one should keep in mind that ‘Perfect is the enemy of good’. It was a long night for European leaders but they were able to come up with a workable result,” he wrote.
The agreement to borrow against EU taxpayer funds rather than Russia’s cash is a political blow to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who had championed the reparations loans and sought to pressure Belgium’s Prime Minister Bart De Wever to lift his objections.
“Europe has won and financial stability has certainly won,” said De Wever. “We avoided chaos, we avoided division.”
Merz described the outcome as “a very practical, good solution that in its impact is just like the solution that we had long discussed, but was clearly just too complicated”.
He stressed that Ukraine would “only have to repay this loan if it is compensated by Russia”.
“We always said that this was about getting Kyiv the money,” said one EU official involved in the negotiations. “Not about how.”
Belgium demanded “uncapped” risk sharing from EU countries against litigation and retaliation risks from Russia, according to an earlier proposal discussed by the leaders, who collectively decided that they could not agree to that maximalist approach.
France and Italy led calls for an alternative proposal using the bloc’s shared budget, the officials added.
The €90bn loan plan agreed at the summit would “not have any financial obligations of Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia”, the leaders agreed.
Those three countries had previously said they would not support using EU cash to fund Ukraine.
“They don’t have to pay — but we will make them pay for it [politically],” said a senior European official.
Tether-owned firm sells crypto miner to companies run by its founder
Stablecoin giant’s Devasini is director of groups that bought Peak Mining from Northern Data
Companies run by Tether’s secretive founder bought a crypto miner from an AI business owned by the stablecoin giant itself, highlighting how one of the world’s biggest crypto companies is managing its complex web of investments.
Tether is the majority owner of German AI data centre operator Northern Data, which announced in November that it had sold its bitcoin mining business, Peak Mining, for up to $200mn. The buyers were later named in a US regulatory filing as Highland Group Mining Inc, Appalachian Energy LLC and 2750418 Alberta ULC.
A British Virgin Islands filing shows that Highland Group’s directors are Giancarlo Devasini, Tether’s co-founder and chair, and Paolo Ardoino, the stablecoin firm’s chief executive. The sole director of the Alberta company is Devasini, according to a Canadian company document. It is unclear who runs Appalachian Energy, which is based in Delaware. The directors of these companies have not previously been reported.
The deal shows how Tether’s top executives are managing part of their sprawling multibillion-dollar business by selling assets to companies they also control.
The acquisition was announced days before conservative US social media platform Rumble, in which Tether has a near-50 per cent stake, agreed to buy Northern Data.
Tether, Devasini and Ardoino declined to comment.
Northern Data did not respond to a request for comment.
Tether, whose USDT coin has about $186bn in circulation, is a prolific venture capitalist and invests some of the billions of dollars earned from its stablecoin in areas such as artificial intelligence, agriculture and sports.
Tether, an affiliate of Northern Data’s CEO and another shareholder together hold 72 per cent of the German-listed company, which has a market capitalisation of around €885mn.
In September, Northern Data’s offices in Germany and Sweden were raided by European prosecutors investigating suspected tax fraud. Officials are investigating whether the company engaged in “large-scale VAT fraud” with damages from unpaid taxes estimated at more than €100mn.
At the time, Northern Data said it believed there had been a “misunderstanding of tax treatment of its GPU offering, which is solely dedicated for cloud computing, and the economic and legal structure of the company’s legacy cryptomining operations”.
“We believe we are in full compliance with international tax standards and have been co-operating with European authorities,” it added at the time.
Northern Data’s other top shareholder is Christian Angermayer, an investor known for backing the so-called steroid Olympics. Last year Angermayer moved from the UK to Lugano, a crypto-friendly Swiss city where Devasini and Ardoino also live.
Devasini, a former plastic surgeon and food delivery company owner, remains Tether’s most influential executive, while Ardoino is the company’s public face.
The sale of Peak Mining follows a previous attempt to sell it to another Devasini-run company.
Northern Data said in August it had agreed a nonbinding deal to sell the miner for $235mn to Elektron Energy, described as a “privately held bitcoin mining company”. The company’s director is Devasini, British Virgin Islands documents show.
Northern Data is listed on a regulated unofficial market in Germany that requires companies to disclose certain “ad hoc” information but not related-party transactions.
Tether has a 48 per cent stake in Rumble, which hosts President Donald Trump’s social media platform. In November, Rumble said it would buy Northern Data in a roughly $767mn deal.
Tether has also agreed a $100mn advertising deal with Rumble and a plan to buy $150mn worth of GPU services from it, once the acquisition of Northern Data is complete, moves that further underscore the complex financial ties between the companies.
Northern Data has a €610mn loan from Tether. Tether will receive half of the loan balance in Rumble stock as part of the acquisition, with the other half paid in the form of a new loan from Tether to Rumble, secured against Northern Data assets.
WPP’s Cindy Rose prepares radical reset in turnaround ‘mission’
Advertising group’s new CEO plans restructuring and says traditional agency model is from a ‘bygone era’
WPP’s new chief executive Cindy Rose is working on a restructuring of the struggling British advertising group, as she vowed that it was her “mission” to secure its long-term future in an industry being rapidly reshaped by artificial intelligence.
In her first interview since taking over in September, Rose said she wants to dramatically simplify the London-listed group’s operations to reflect that the traditional advertising agency network model was from “a bygone era”.
The plans, which Rose said will help transform WPP from “being a holding company to an operating company”, will be unveiled fully next month.
Rose, 60, took charge of a company reeling from a succession of client losses and profit warnings, leading to a drop in WPP’s shares of about 60 per cent over the past year. The group is now valued at just £3.7bn, having been worth as much as £24bn less than a decade ago, and dropped out of the FTSE 100 this month for the first time in close to 30 years.
“You have to understand [that] this is more than just a new job for me. This is a mission,” Rose said, adding that she intends to secure the next 40 years of a “great British company that deserves to be successful”.
The new chief executive declined to comment on potential job losses but conceded she is “trying to find operational efficiencies.”
Rose, who previously led Microsoft’s operations in Europe, took WPP’s top job from long-term boss Mark Read after serving on the group’s board as a non executive director since 2019. During an interview at WPP’s new London offices, on the south bank of the river Thames, Rose vowed to “simplify” the group’s operating model.
“We’ve got to be able to provide integrated services to our clients, because that’s what they tell us they want,” she said. “[Clients] want the best of WPP, wherever that talent sits. They don’t want to be constrained by agency constructs. That might mean there’s a social influencer expert there and a commerce expert there and a data expert there.”
More than half of client pitches are for integrated services across WPP’s agencies.
Rose, a dual US/UK national who splits her time between London and New York, has concentrated on WPP’s clients in her first few months. “I see clients every single day. I’m in pitches, I’m doing meet and greets, I’m in quarterly business reviews.”
In October WPP projected that adjusted like-for-like revenues will decline by between 5.5 and 6 per cent for the current year, prompting Rose to say WPP’s performance had not been acceptable. She said this had since been taken as “a call to action” internally.
“Clients are already noticing the difference, and it’s showing up in the business that we’re winning,” she said.
In her first 100 days — “not that I’m counting” — Rose said WPP has won work for Mastercard, Henkel, Reckitt Benckiser, PwC and Goldman Sachs. It won more than $1.5bn in billings in November, and is set to land a major UK government contract in January.
Rose acknowledged that WPP’s major shareholders are “obviously frustrated . . . all I can do is show up and listen and show humility.” Earlier this month WPP raised €1bn in an oversubscribed bond issue, seen by insiders as a vote of confidence from the City.
The decline in WPP’s share price has been partly driven by concerns over the impact of AI tools — which are able to produce ads cheaper, faster and at a huge scale.
Rose countered that WPP would use the technology to its advantage, citing WPP Open, its AI powered marketing platform that turns simple prompts into ads in minutes, as a key source of differentiation.
The platform — which also helps WPP plan, place and measure the effectiveness of ads — allows the group to “break down the silos between creative production and media, all powered by a common data model,” Rose said. She believes there is a “misperception in the market that we’re lagging behind [in the use of AI tools].”
WPP’s boss acknowledged that the adoption of AI tools will lead to questions over the viability of some roles internally but rejected the idea that the technology is “an existential threat” for the industry.
“I think AI is a once in a generation opportunity,” she said. “AI automates the ordinary and massively elevates the extraordinary. And to do extraordinary creative work, you need humans.”
WPP is not the only advertising holding company reorganising itself. Last month, Omnicom killed off several historic agency brands as part of its merger with IPG. Rose said though that she is supportive of WPP having multiple agencies despite her push to simply its structure.
Even so, she said the jobs in WPP were changing. It has more than 12,000 “creatives” but almost as many — nearly 10,000 — software engineers, developers, AI practitioners and data scientists.
The rapid growth in the use of AI to make ads threatens to upend the concept of the “billable hour”, which the industry has long relied upon in charging for its work.
Rose admits AI “will put downward pressure on pricing,” adding that WPP has to convince clients it’s worth them reinvesting the money they save into its other services, which can “set them apart from their competitors.”
“If we do our jobs well — and we will — AI will be value-accretive to WPP,” she said. “It’s not going to flip overnight, but we’ll go from being a ‘time and materials’ based business to more of a tech fees and outcome based one.”
“The good news about all of this [disruption is that] it’s all within our control,” Rose added. “It’s all about execution. We’re fixing it now.”
Japan raises interest rates to highest level in 30 years
Yields on 10-year government bonds exceed 2% for first time since 2006 after central bank’s fourth rate increase
The Bank of Japan has raised short-term interest rates to their highest level in 30 years and kept the door open to further increases, as rising prices transform an economy that spent decades mired in deflation.
The BoJ said on Friday it was raising its policy rate by 0.25 percentage points to “around 0.75 per cent”.
The rate increase, a unanimous decision by the bank’s Policy Board, was the fourth under governor Kazuo Ueda, continuing a “normalisation” process he launched last year.
The rate rise was widely anticipated after what traders said was unusually clear messaging ahead of the decision. A less telegraphed rate increase in July 2024 caused severe market ructions.
Yields on 10-year JGBs climbed 0.035 percentage points to exceed 2 per cent for the first time since 2006, edging closer to their highest level since the 1990s. Bond yields move inversely to prices.
Anticipation of the BoJ’s move and investor concerns that Japan’s fiscal position will be stretched by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s spending plans have driven JGB yields to multiyear highs in recent weeks.
The yen weakened 0.3 per cent against the dollar to ¥156.08 immediately following the BoJ’s announcement before strengthening to ¥155.85.
“There was some disappointment in the market that the BoJ’s statement was not more hawkish, but the central bank does seem to have handled this very smoothly this time,” said Shoki Omori, chief desk strategist at Mizuho. “I think that the risk, though, is that this [rate increase] will not significantly move the yen higher.”
The BoJ statement noted that labour conditions in Japan, where the population is shrinking, continued to be tight, while corporate profits were expected to remain strong despite the impact of tariff policies.
The central bank said companies were “highly likely” to keep raising wages next year and that prices would continue to rise moderately.
Those conditions justified the adjustment of monetary policy, it said, a move that some economists judged to be at odds with Takaichi’s sweeping economic stimulus plans.
The BoJ observed that “real interest rates are expected to remain significantly negative after the change in the policy interest rate, and accommodative financial conditions will continue to firmly support economic activity”.
It added that because real interest rates were low, if the economy performed in line with expectations, it would continue to raise the policy rate and adjust the degree of monetary accommodation.
Traders said markets would look for greater clarity on interest rate rises in 2026 during Ueda’s press conference later on Friday.
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Headline consumer price inflation has been above the BoJ’s target level of 2 per cent for more than three years, driven by the yen’s relative weakness and Japan’s dependence on imports of food and energy.
Shortly before the BoJ’s decision was announced, official data showed consumer prices excluding fresh food rose 3 per cent in November from a year earlier.
Kei Fujimoto, senior economist at SuMi Trust, said: “The BoJ’s stance towards rate hikes reflects the fact that inflation is becoming entrenched. Factors such as the pass-through of import prices, raw material costs and labour expenses are contributing to sustained inflation.”
After Hours Summary: NKE -9.4% lower on earnings; FDX +2.1% higher on earnings; LNKB +6.5% higher on merger with BHRB; WSJ reports that OpenAI financing round may push valuation toward $830 bln
After Hours Gainers:
Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: AVO +5.1% (also Founder & CEO Steve Barnard to become Exec Chairman; COO to become new CEO), NNE +2.5%, FDX +2.1%
Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to news: WYFI +13.6% (announces 40 MW colocation agreement), LNKB +6.5% (BHRB and LNKB to merge), TAC +2% (Sheerness Unit 1 will be temporarily mothballed), WULF +1.4% (financing for previously disclosed 168 MW computing joint venture), IVR +1.1% (increases dividend; also plans to switch to monthly dividends in Jan), HTFL +0.8% (announces publication of 2 new scientific statements), CRWV +0.8% (joins DoE's Genesis Mission to advance US research and innovation), BBAI +0.5% (strategic partnership with C Speed), FRST +0.4% (approves stock repurchase program for up to 750,000 shares), ETHZ +0.3% (stock offering by selling shareholders), DGNX +0.2% (to acquire The Remedy Project)
After Hours Losers:
Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: NKE -9.4%, SCHL -1.3% (also authorizes new $150 mln share repurchase program), BB -0.2%
Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to news: CGTX -1.3% (files for $300 mln mixed shelf offering; also enters sales agreement up to $75 mln of stock), FTI -0.3% (awarded a substantial contract by Eni S.p.A), META -0.3% (developing a new image and video-focused AI model, according to WSJ), LINE -0.1% (files mixed securities shelf offering)