-
Biggest increases in one-year vs three-month IV spread:
- Sanofi term structure up 1.3 point to 0, in the 82nd percentile; stock fell 0.7% w/w (RSI: 39); skew in the 12th percentile
- Mercedes term structure up 1.3 point to -0.3, in the 82nd percentile; stock fell 1.1% w/w (RSI: 55); skew in the 89th percentile
- Ferrari term structure up 1.2 point to 0.6, in the 67th percentile; stock rose 0.3% w/w (RSI: 31); skew in the 25th percentile
- Eni term structure up 1.1 point to 3.4, in the 100th percentile; stock fell 2.3% w/w (RSI: 39); skew in the 66th percentile
- Iberdrola term structure up 1 point to 2.8, in the 89th percentile; stock rose 0.7% w/w (RSI: 53); skew in the 30th percentile
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Biggest decreases in one-year vs three-month IV spread:
- Rheinmetall term structure down 2.3 points to -2.4, in the 50th percentile; stock fell 5.2% w/w (RSI: 43); skew in the 64th percentile
- Schneider Electric term structure down 1.2 points to -0.9, in the 57th percentile; stock fell 1.1% w/w (RSI: 46); skew in the 14th percentile
- Wolters Kluwer term structure down 1.1 points to -3.4, in the 1st percentile; stock rose 2.8% w/w (RSI: 43); skew in the 13th percentile
- Deutsche Post term structure down 0.9 points to 0.4, in the 85th percentile; stock rose 0.9% w/w (RSI: 63); skew in the 23rd percentile
- Adidas term structure down 0.8 points to 0.3, in the 70th percentile; stock rose 2.2% w/w (RSI: 53); skew in the 17th percentile
Uniformed Armed Guards Spotted On Russian 'Shadow Fleet' Vessels Off Europe
Russia is upping the ante at a moment the US and some European countries are threatening action and new sanctions on vessels transporting Russian oil and gas to global markets, in defiance of Western sanctions.
Sweden's navy announced Wednesday it has spotted armed personnel in uniform providing security for vessels linked to Russia's so-called "shadow fleet" traversing main shipping routes in the Baltic Sea.
Russian-linked tankers in waters off northern Europe have of late been under threat of interdiction and boarding by European authorities. This scenario has actually happened within the last two years as these vessels came under suspicion of cutting undersea telecoms cables and other alleged sabotage activity.
The head of operations for Sweden's navy, Commodore Marko Petkovic, has been quoted by Swedish broadcaster SVT as saying the individuals observed aboard the tankers likely work for private security companies.
He also said that Russia's military has become "more permanent and more visible" in and near the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Finland, with warship activity becoming more routine.
"The Russian Navy is periodically present at various hubs in the Baltic Sea, the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic Sea, and appears to be operating there in some way in support of this shadow fleet," Petkovic said.
But it should be noted that armed personnel aboard oil tankers should be seen as nothing new or alarming, given this is a regular practice among all countries and shipping firms especially off the eastern African coast, where piracy is a persistent threat.
Sweden in the instance of alleged Russian personnel aboard 'illicit' tankers is saying this is a new and provocative development in European waters, however.
Russia frequently deploys contractors to provide protection for assets and personnel abroad, just as the US and European countries do.
At this moment, Washington is mulling additional sanctions on Russian energy and shipping, and so threat of seizing tankers and cargo could grow - and this provides Moscow good reason to bulk up security on these ships.
The Memory-Chip Rally Lifting Micron Isn’t Done
The Takeaway
- Micron, Samsung, SK Hynix stocks surged over 100% from AI chip demand.
- High-bandwidth memory demand outpaces supply, boosting chipmakers’ margins.
- Memory chip market leaders secure long-term contracts for future AI needs.
When Micron Technology reports its fiscal first-quarter earnings on Wednesday afternoon, investors will be listening for the memory chip maker’s outlook in the next few quarters. Micron is one of three companies, along with Samsung and SK Hynix, that make high-bandwidth memory, a key component of AI chips. Surging demand for AI chips has lifted memory chip revenues for all three companies in the past year or so.
That in turn has lifted all three stocks by more than 100% this year—Micron alone is up 165%. Given the seemingly limitless appetite for AI chips, demand for memory should continue to outpace supply for the next couple of years, which suggests that even after their recent run-up, these secondary beneficiaries of the AI boom should have more room to rise. The question now is how much more room the stocks have to run.
“AI spending is going to be strong next year, and memory is a clear area, kind of like storage drives, where you don’t have a ton of competitors and you don’t have a lot of capacity coming on,” said Gus Zinn, a Nomura portfolio manager who oversees the firm’s $6.7 billion science and technology fund.
High-bandwidth memory runs alongside a graphics processing unit—the AI chip, typically made by Nvidia—and helps pipe data to that processor faster and more efficiently. In addition to selling these memory components, Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix offer other data memory products that are useful in training and running AI models as well as for handling traditional cloud computing workloads and for use in smartphones and personal computers. The massive demand for HBM in AI data centers in particular has led to a shortage, allowing all three companies to raise their prices.
Doubling Density
The market for memory chips, including HBM, is highly concentrated: Micron, Samsung and SK Hynix together make up 94% of it, according to the latest figures from Counterpoint Research. And demand from AI chipmakers for memory capacity, sometimes referred to as density, has been steadily increasing as they churn out new generations of processors.
“Every generation of accelerators requires a lot more HBM. The density of HBM [per chip] has been pretty much doubling from generation to generation” if you look across the latest AI processors from Nvidia, AMD and Google, said UBS equity analyst Tim Arcuri.
HBM companies’ manufacturing capacity is nowhere near adequate to meet today’s demand. That’s likely one reason why OpenAI struck deals with Samsung and SK Hynix this fall to secure HBM chips for data centers associated with its Stargate project. OpenAI had already struck a deal to use Nvidia technology, which theoretically should include the HBM. But dealing directly with the memory chip makers could give the company more flexibility in the long term, making it easier to pair the memory with its own custom AI chips.
SK Hynix’s parent company in October said OpenAI’s demand alone will require the entire sector to double its capacity. Making enough memory chips to meet OpenAI’s needs could take anywhere from one to five years, said Kevin Krewell, a retired computing and deep tech analyst who spent more than a decade at Tirias Research.
And even if the pace of training new AI models slows down, demand for HBM chips could remain strong.
“Even if you’re not putting high-bandwidth memory or high-performance memory in the GPUs or the [other specialized AI chips], you still need the [central processing units] that are running the software, and those also require a significant amount of memory, as these large models take a lot of memory,” Krewell said.
The chipmakers’ pricing power has already lifted their profit margins. In the September quarter, Micron’s gross margin jumped to 46%, up 9 percentage points from a year earlier. A similar trend has played out at SK Hynix, which like Micron mainly focuses on selling memory and storage products.
Micron and SK Hynix have both been growing their top line by more than 30% in each of the last several quarters. Wall Street analysts polled by S&P Global Market Intelligence expect that pace of growth to accelerate for both companies next year. They project that Micron, for one, will grow its revenue by 58% in its fiscal 2026, which ends in August. In fiscal 2027, the analysts predict that Micron’s growth will slow to 18% but its gross margin will jump higher again that year to 57%, a level it hasn’t reached since 2018.
Samsung’s gross profit margin has also risen with the latest boom in demand for its memory chips, but less than the margins for the other two. It is overall growing much more slowly. That’s because at Samsung, chips make up less than half of sales, with consumer electronics such as smartphones and TVs contributing the rest. But even for Samsung, the AI memory shortage is a notable catalyst: The company’s semiconductor device solutions division, which includes its memory chip business and a chip manufacturing foundry, contributed 58% of its operating profit in the September quarter, up from 42% a year ago.
The Next Six Months
To be sure, the companies’ shares aren’t cheap after their rally this year. Each is trading slightly above its respective average multiple of forward earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization over the last decade. Micron currently trades at seven times next year’s Ebitda, and the other two trade at around four times. But their valuations today look more attractive than in mid-2023, when Micron and SK Hynix traded at around 15 times and had negative gross margins as a result of overbuilding capacity to meet surging pandemic demand. Arcuri of UBS is betting that memory chips’ usefulness to AI will mean their makers can maintain better pricing power than ever before.
“The whole thing about Micron is it has been uber-cyclical, so you pay a super-low multiple off of a high earnings number. That’s changing, because it’s becoming less cyclical,” he said. (Arcuri has a “buy” rating for Micron, but he doesn’t cover the other two firms, which are based in South Korea.)
Long-term contracts should insulate the memory chip makers from any near-term slowdown in AI chip demand, Arcuri added. “Nvidia, AMD and Google are all procuring HBM at least a year, in some cases two years out, and locking in volume and pricing.”
Nomura’s Zinn is holding on to a position in Micron, which he acquired more than a year ago. He also added a position in Samsung to his portfolio a few months ago. Samsung, he argued, has a long-term advantage in its foundry business, which makes it one of just a few companies in the world besides Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. that can produce large numbers of semiconductors. Samsung this year restored its dual-CEO structure and is starting to get “back on track” after falling behind its peers technologically, Zinn noted.
Still, “the whole storage market is in a giant bull market,” he said. Trying to pick one winner among the stocks that make data storage and memory chips doesn’t make sense, he said, because “they’re all great, and they’re all kind of the same trade.”
Expectations are high ahead of Micron’s upcoming earnings report on Wednesday. Micron has projected 44% year-over-year revenue growth, but the consensus among analysts is that revenue will grow 48% to $12.88 billion, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Besides cooling AI demand, the other long-term risk for the memory makers is that down the line they could end up adding so much excess capacity that prices have to come down. For now, that scenario looks to be a ways off, so it’s not too late to get in on the memory trade, Zinn said.
So when would Zinn consider selling his shares in Micron, which he’s owned for over a year?
“I don’t like to think about it in terms of stock price, but more in terms of time,” he said. “I think the spending and AI in memory and all these areas that we’ve been talking about is going to be strong next year, so I feel pretty good owning it for the next six months.”
How a Swiss compromise could save UBS billions
A proposal from a cross-party group of politicians could break the deadlock with the country’s biggest bank
Nearly two years after the Swiss government first proposed significantly increasing the capital requirements of UBS — igniting a heated dispute with the country’s largest bank — there are signs that the debate is finally moving in a more amicable direction.
A cross-party group of Swiss politicians last week laid out a set of compromise proposals, which recommended considerably watering down the government’s original plans. In doing so, the lawmakers have presented a roadmap that has been cautiously welcomed by the bank and could break the deadlock between the two sides, according to analysts.
Here is how their compromise could work:
Foreign subsidiaries
Switzerland’s seven-member federal council — the country’s executive branch — proposed in June to increase the bank’s capital requirements by up to $26bn in an attempt to mitigate the risk of another Credit Suisse-style collapse. UBS acquired its crosstown rival in a state-orchestrated rescue in March 2023.
The “too big to fail” reforms centre around forcing UBS to fully back its international subsidiaries with capital at the parent bank, a move that the government said would require the lender to have about $23bn in additional loss-absorbing capital.
At present, UBS is only required to match 60 per cent of the capital at its international subsidiaries — such as the US and UK — with capital at the parent bank.
Under the government’s proposal, UBS would only be allowed to use common equity tier one (CET1) capital — the most expensive form of bank capital — to meet the requirement to fully capitalise its foreign subsidiaries.
However, the lawmakers proposed allowing UBS to use additional tier one (AT1) debt to cover up to half of the capitalisation of its foreign units, significantly reducing the overall capital hit.
CET1 capital — primarily ordinary shares and retained profits — is the highest-quality capital a bank has. It is used as a bank’s primary buffer to absorb losses and typically does so first in a time of crisis, making it the most expensive type of bank capital.
AT1 bonds are debt issued by banks that sit below CET1 in the traditional capital hierarchy and convert into equity or are written down when a lender runs into trouble. Because AT1 debt usually absorbs losses after CET1, investors face less risk, making AT1s a cheaper form of capital. In its third-quarter results, UBS disclosed $74.7bn in CET1 capital and $20.3bn of AT1 debt.
Kian Abouhossein, a senior equity analyst at JPMorgan Chase, estimated that under the lawmakers’ proposal to allow UBS use AT1 debt to cover up to 50 per cent of the capitalisation of its international units, UBS would only need to raise an additional $400mn in CET1 capital.
This compared with an estimated $20.4bn under the Swiss government’s proposal to fully deduct its foreign subsidiaries only through CET1 capital. Abouhossein added that the compromise scenario would require UBS to raise about $16bn in new AT1 debt.
“Getting 50 per cent of subsidiaries backing in AT1 instead of CET1 has a huge impact,” said Jérôme Legras, a managing partner at Axiom Alternative Investments, which is an investor in UBS. “It would bring the required CET1 amount very close to [UBS’s] current level.”
Switzerland’s chequered history with AT1s
The proposal to allow use of AT1s to boost UBS’s capital position is likely to raise eyebrows, following Switzerland’s controversial treatment of the instruments in the Credit Suisse takeover in 2023.
The UBS-Credit Suisse deal, which was orchestrated by the Swiss government, upended the traditional hierarchy among bank creditors by imposing losses on bondholders while allowing equity investors to recover $3.3bn.
A Swiss court ruled in October that regulators’ decision to wipe out SFr16.5bn ($20.7bn) of Credit Suisse AT1 bonds was unlawful, but stopped short of determining whether investors should be repaid. Swiss financial regulator Finma and UBS are appealing against the ruling. However, bondholders are exploring ways to push for a settlement with UBS.
“If this goes through, we’ll end up in a funny scenario where most of the recapitalisation would come from the instrument that has been criticised so much: AT1s,” said Legras.
Asset valuation
The other key part of the government’s “too big to fail” reform package related to strengthening the quality of UBS’s capital base, namely by tightening how banks quantify items such as deferred tax assets (DTAs), in-house software and other hard-to-value items on their books.
This proposal in effect redefines what counts as capital for UBS, wiping out about $11bn by discounting the value of software and DTAs.
The government said these changes would add about $3bn to the capital requirements of UBS’s parent bank, but some analysts have estimated that the impact to the wider group could be as high as $11bn.
The lawmakers’ compromise proposal recommended that Swiss banks should only be required to follow international rules for most hard-to-value assets, in effect pushing for the government to abandon its proposals in this area.
It said the treatment of bank software should comply with EU rules, while DTAs should continue to be treated according to EU, UK, US and Basel III regulations.
“The distance to the rules of leading financial centres in the EU, UK, USA, and Asia must never be so great that [Swiss] competitiveness is compromised,” the cross-party group of lawmakers said.
Investment bank cap
The final recommendation in the lawmakers’ plan was to cap the size of UBS’s investment bank at 30 per cent of its risk-weighted assets.
The investment bank already has a self-imposed limit of 25 per cent of UBS’s RWAs, as the Swiss bank’s business model is much more heavily geared towards its comparatively stable wealth management business than its riskier trading and dealmaking activities.
Executives at the bank have indicated that they would be in favour of a permanent cap. The lawmakers said UBS should face “discretionary capital surcharges” if it was to exceed this limit.
What next?
The saga over UBS’s capital position has weighed heavily on the bank’s share price. Since the proposals were first mooted in April 2024, the stock has only climbed by about a quarter compared with a 150 per cent rise in the wider Euro Stoxx Banks index, which tracks the largest lenders in the Eurozone.
The cross-party composition of the politicians proposing the compromise capital plan has buoyed analysts and investors. The four parties involved represent a majority of lawmakers in both houses of parliament.
This is important because the changes to foreign subsidiaries — the main part of the reform package — is subject to parliamentary approval. A public consultation on these reforms closes in early January, with the parliamentary process expected to start during the second half of 2026.
Meanwhile, the reforms around the valuation of assets will be decided by the federal council via an executive ordinance. A decision is expected during the first six months of next year.
Andreas Venditti, an analyst at Vontobel, cautioned that there was no certainty that the parties involved in the compromise proposal could guarantee unanimous support within their parliamentary ranks.
However, he added that the plan could accelerate the parliamentary process and reduce the uncertainty hanging over UBS.
“If everyone agrees, this could potentially be solved by the end of next year.”
Others are also cautiously optimistic. JPMorgan’s Abouhossein said the proposal “moves the debate in a helpful direction”, while Axiom’s Legras said: “It looks like we’re getting closer to the finish line.”
Carmakers sour on EU’s ‘disastrous’ petrol engine rule changes
As details have become clearer, executives warn the easing of the combustion engine ban would lead to more expensive vehicles
The car industry has soured on the EU’s plan to ease the 2035 ban on combustion engines as details have become clearer, with some executives warning the “disastrous” changes would lead to more expensive vehicles.
Brussels said on Tuesday it would scrap a law forcing carmakers to cut their emissions to zero by 2035. 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.
The softening of the 2035 ban was meant to be a hard-won victory for carmakers after months of intense lobbying. Although it was initially welcomed by some carmakers, many companies said the offsets would be too challenging to bring in since the required use of green steel and “made in Europe” content in vehicles would be complex and expensive.
“In times when European economic strength is crucial, this entire package from Brussels is disastrous,” said Hildegard Müller, president of the German car lobby VDA. “What appears to be greater openness is fraught with so many obstacles that it risks remaining ineffective in practice.”
Stellantis, the European group behind the Jeep, Fiat and Peugeot brands, said the proposals failed to address the challenges in the electric transition for light commercial vehicles and did not include enough flexibility to meet emissions targets in 2030.
“The introduction of technology neutrality through the revision of the 2035 CO₂ reduction target is an important step but, as currently proposed, it will not support the production of affordable vehicles for the vast majority of customers,” it said.
Auto industry analyst Matthias Schmidt predicted petrol cars would “become haute couture Swiss watches of the motor industry” with the added costs of green steel and renewable fuel priced in.
The French car industry body, the Plateforme automobile (PFA), has adopted a more measured approach to the package, saying that the policies “represent an initial response to the urgent challenges facing the European automotive industry today”.
France, which had pushed for “made in Europe” protections that are set to be announced in January, was broadly reassured by the measures, one industry expert said, although the PFA wants to see more flexibility for vans and on 2030 emissions targets.
In a sign of deep division among EU member states, negotiations over the revision, particularly on whether full combustion engines should still be allowed after 2035 and on national targets to electrify corporate fleets, ran down to the wire on Tuesday.
A senior EU official said the offsets for the final 10 per cent were a “pretty strong compromise” given heated politics around the easing of the ban, which has been heavily lobbied by industry and countries such as Germany, Italy and the Czech Republic.
Manfred Weber, the Bavarian leader of the conservative European People’s party, the European parliament’s largest political group, had claimed victory on Friday, saying the Commission would put forward “a clear proposal to abolish the ban on combustion engines”, without mentioning conditions for green steel and renewable fuel.
Chris Heron, secretary-general of E-Mobility Europe, a trade association, estimated that the changes meant that plug-in hybrids and other petrol vehicles could account for more than a quarter of new car sales in Europe based on preliminary estimates.
“By reopening the door to plug-ins, hybrids and unscalable biofuels, we risk slowing ourselves down in a highly competitive global race,” Heron said.
The proposal setting binding national EV ratios for zero emissions corporate vehicles was among the most contested elements, EU officials said. A draft list of targets showed that Germany was originally expected to run an entirely electric corporate fleet after 2035 but after negotiations on Tuesday, the goal was reduced to 95 per cent.
EU officials said the corporate fleets proposal was critical to maintaining the bloc’s ambitions for cutting emissions in the road transport sector, which accounts for about 20 per cent of the total, because it would expand the second-hand market for electric cars.
“A great aspect is that it brings these vehicles to the second-hand market much faster,” one official noted, adding that about 80 per cent of EU citizens buy cars second-hand.
But Richard Knubben, director-general at Leaseurope, which represents Europe’s leasing and automotive rental companies, warned that limiting financing options for companies and the lack of incentives for EV uptake meant that the corporate fleets rules were “likely to make a difficult situation worse for the manufacturers”.
Berlin launches ‘Germany Fund’ to lure private equity investors
Initiative aims to raise €130bn in investments amid growing interest from firms including KKR and Apollo
Friedrich Merz’s government is launching a “Germany Fund” to attract up to €130bn in private investments for higher-risk projects, a move designed to supercharge a massive public infrastructure and defence spending drive aimed at reviving the German economy.
The so-called Deutschlandsfonds, which will be anchored in state development bank KfW and led by its chief executive Stefan Wintels, would be seeded with about €30bn in public money and loan guarantees, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
It will offer an array of investment vehicles and projects to channel private funds into sectors including tech and defence start-ups, energy infrastructure and critical minerals projects. An official announcement by the finance and the economy ministers is scheduled for Thursday.
The initiative is part of efforts by the ruling coalition to pull Europe’s largest economy out of stagnation, as it battles high energy prices and fierce Chinese competition in its traditional export markets.
Stagnation and deindustrialisation are also fuelling support for the far-right Alternative for Germany party, which won more than a fifth of seats in parliament in elections earlier this year.
Since taking office in May, Merz has set out plans to inject more than €1tn in public spending over the next decade to renovate Germany’s dilapidated infrastructure and upgrade its neglected armed forces. But his government was also seeking to attract private capital to amplify the growth effect, according to government insiders.
“We have done a lot in terms of unlocking funds for public infrastructure and the military, but Germany needs much more and we can’t just rely on public money,” said economist and finance ministry adviser Jens Südekum.
The idea was to facilitate debt financing for projects banks are reluctant to fund, he said, referring to a lithium mining project in Saxony, which just received federal state support.
One of the people with knowledge of the details said US private equity fund managers KKR and Apollo had recently met German officials in Berlin to express an interest in investing in the country.
The finance ministry declined to comment on the details.
Start-ups have long complained that the lack of capital was pushing them to seek funds and list abroad. The Germany Fund initiative was a “step in the right direction”, said Verena Pausder, head of Germany’s start-up association.
Merz’s government has sought to put the finishing touches to a series of reforms before the end of the year. This week, the cabinet approved a plan to encourage Germans to tap capital markets to boost their private pensions. From next year, it will offer all six-year-olds €10 a month until the age of 18, which their parents will be able to invest in state-backed savings accounts.
After some coalition infighting between Merz’s Christian Democrats and its Social Democrats partner, the cabinet also agreed on speeding up planning permits for infrastructure projects, which have often been blocked by stringent environmental rules. But the big test will come next year, with a planned overhaul of the country’s costly pension system and health insurance.
“We will also have to make further structural reforms next year so that our economy becomes competitive again, because we’re still a long way off where we really need to be,” Merz told parliament on Wednesday.
Rocket Internet accused of marking down start-up stakes to ease buyouts
Shareholder’s claims of impairments put billionaire investor Oliver Samwer’s stewardship back in the spotlight
Rocket Internet has been accused of marking down the valuations of start-up investments in order to buy out its own backers at “bargain prices”.
The European tech investment firm run by billionaire Oliver Samwer has been challenged by a minority shareholder over what it says are “overly conservative” valuations for holdings in booming start-ups such as SpaceX, Kalshi and Canva.
Cologne-based Scherzer & Co argues Rocket’s 2024 financial statements were influenced by “questionable” impairments, according to a letter seen by the Financial Times and sent to Rocket’s leadership and auditor EY. After booking the writedowns, Samwer’s investment firm reported a net loss of more than €550mn in 2024.
Scherzer said in its letter: “We cannot escape the suspicion that you had a particular interest in presenting the company as poorly as possible and concealing its true value . . . in order to repurchase shares at bargain prices.”
The allegations are the latest controversy to hit Rocket, which has previously been criticised by investors for a lack of transparency since delisting in 2020.
Samwer has since taken a stronger grip, buying out activist investor Elliott Management in 2021. He currently owns more than 80 per cent of the business.
After Samwer founded the firm with his brothers almost two decades ago, Rocket has become one of Europe’s most prominent tech investors, backing groups such as Germany’s Zalando and Delivery Hero.
In the letter sent earlier this month, Scherzer states that Rocket marked down its 5.1 per cent stake in US prediction market operator Kalshi from €4.4mn to €400,000.
Kalshi has gone on to raise money at far higher valuations, with Scherzer estimating that Rocket’s holdings should now be worth roughly €370mn.
Scherzer also accuses Rocket of taking significant impairments in 2024 to its stakes in payments group SumUp and design software group Canva, arguing that subsequent valuation increases at those start-ups mean Rocket’s holdings should have increased by tens of millions of euros.
Scherzer’s estimates of the fair value of Rocket’s stakes in Kalshi, SumUp and Canva should have increased by about €870mn combined, or €10.50 per share.
Rocket’s stock on the Hamburg stock exchange — where a small number of its shares still trade — is worth €18.10 at a market capitalisation of €1.47bn.
The Cologne-based shareholder also highlighted Rocket’s 11.9 per cent stake in Gigafund 0.14, an investment vehicle that has holdings in SpaceX.
Rocket valued this position at €65mn. Scherzer said this figure is only modestly above the amount Rocket paid for its position in Gigafund, despite dramatic growth in SpaceX’s private-market valuation.
Scherzer, which owns a 0.6 per cent stake in Rocket, also suggests Samwer’s firm has roughly €1.38bn in free reserves that could be used to launch a buyback programme.
As a result, Scherzer has urged EY to scrutinise Rocket’s upcoming accounts closely and reminded Rocket’s supervisory board of its duty to all shareholders.
In 2023, the FT revealed that Samwer’s investment vehicle Global Founders had secured a structure enabling him to receive a €260mn annual dividend through increased control over Rocket’s venture capital assets.
Rocket and Samwer did not respond to requests for comment. EY declined to comment.
YouTube will stream the Oscars — exclusively — beginning in 2029
YouTube has won exclusive rights to stream the Oscars starting in 2029, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced on Wednesday. The Google-owned platform outbid other contenders, including the Oscars’ longtime home ABC, ending the network’s streak of hosting the awards show since 1961 (with the exception of a brief period in the early 1970s).
YouTube’s first show will be the 101st Oscars in 2029, and its deal will run through 2033. ABC will continue to broadcast the ceremony until 2028.
The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The news, which marks a landmark shift for one of television’s marquee events, highlights YouTube’s growing dominance in the television space and a major shift as streaming takes on more live events. The ceremony will be available live and for free to more than 2 billion viewers globally on YouTube, as well as to YouTube TV subscribers in the United States. The move comes as Oscar ratings have steadily fallen from a peak of 55 million viewers in 1998 to closer to 20 million in recent years, prompting the Academy to explore new ways to reach audiences.
“We are thrilled to enter into a multifaceted global partnership with YouTube to be the future home of the Oscars and our year-round Academy programming,” said Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy President Lynette Howell Taylor in a joint statement. “The Academy is an international organization, and this partnership will allow us to expand access to the work of the Academy to the largest worldwide audience possible — which will be beneficial for our Academy members and the film community.”
As part of the deal, YouTube will not only broadcast the ceremony, but also red carpet coverage, behind-the-scenes content, the Oscar nominations announcement, Academy member and filmmaker interviews, Governors Ball access, film education programs, podcasts, and more.
“The Oscars are one of our essential cultural institutions, honoring excellence in storytelling and artistry,” YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said in a statement. “Partnering with the Academy to bring this celebration of art and entertainment to viewers all over the world will inspire a new generation of creativity and film lovers while staying true to the Oscars’ storied legacy.”
Although this isn’t the first time a streamer has acquired the rights to an awards show — Netflix has secured rights to the SAG Awards — it’s the first time one of the big four awards shows (Emmys, Grammys, Oscars, and Tonys) will leave broadcast TV entirely in favor of streaming.
Google launches Gemini 3 Flash, makes it the default model in the Gemini app
Google today released its fast and cheap Gemini 3 Flash model, based on the Gemini 3 released last month, looking to steal OpenAI’s thunder. The company is also making this the default model in the Gemini app and AI mode in search.
The new Flash model arrives six months after Google announced the Gemini 2.5 Flash model, offering significant improvements. On the benchmark, the Gemini 3 Flash model outperforms its predecessor by a significant margin and matches the performance of other frontier models, like Gemini 3 Pro and GPT 5.2, in some measures.
For instance, it scored 33.7% without tool use on Humanity’s Last Exam benchmark, which is designed to test expertise across different domains. In comparison, Gemini 3 Pro scored 37.5%, Gemini 2.5 Flash scored 11%, and the newly released GPT-5.2 scored 34.5%.
On the multimodality and reasoning benchmark MMMU-Pro, the new model outscored all competitors with an 81.2% score.
Consumer rollout
Google is making Gemini 3 Flash the default model in the Gemini app globally, replacing Gemini 2.5 Flash. Users can still choose the Pro model from the model picker for math and coding questions.
The company says the new model is good at identifying multimodal content and giving you an answer based on that. For instance, you can upload your pickleball short video and ask for tips; you can try drawing a sketch and have the model guess what you are drawing; or you can upload an audio recording to get analysis or generate a quiz.
The company also said the model better understands the intent of users’ queries and can generate more visual answers with elements like images and tables.
You can also use the new model to create app prototypes in the Gemini app using prompts.
The Gemini 3 Pro is now available to everyone in the U.S. for search and more people in the U.S. can access the Nano Banana Pro image model in search, as well.
Enterprise and developer availability
Google noted that companies like JetBrains, Figma, Cursor, Harvey, and Latitude are already using the Gemini 3 Flash model, which is available through Vertex AI and Gemini Enterprise.
For developers, the company is making the model available in a preview model through the API and in Antigravity, Google’s new coding tool released last month.
The company said the Gemini 3 Pro scores 78% on the SWE-bench verified coding benchmark, only outperformed by GPT-5.2. It added that the model is ideal for video analysis, data extraction, and visual Q&A, and because of its speed, it is suited for quick and repeatable workflows.
Model pricing is $0.50 per 1 million input tokens and $3.00 per 1 million output tokens. This is slightly more expensive than $0.30 per 1 million input tokens and $2.50 per 1 million output tokens of Gemini Flash 2.5. But Google claims that the new model outperforms the Gemini 2.5 Pro model while being three times faster. And, for thinking tasks, it uses 30% fewer tokens on average than 2.5 Pro. That means overall, you might save on the number of tokens for certain tasks.
“We really position flash as more of your workhorse model. So if you look at, for example, even the input and output prices at the top of this table, Flash is just a much cheaper offering from an input and output price perspective. And so it actually allows for, for many companies, bulk tasks,” Tulsee Doshi, senior director & head of Product for Gemini Models, told TechCrunch in a briefing
Since it released Gemini 3, Google has processed over 1 trillion tokens per day on its API, amid its fierce release and performance war with OpenAI.
Earlier this month, Sam Altman reportedly sent an internal “Code Red” memo to the OpenAI team after ChatGPT’s traffic dipped as Google’s market share in consumers rose. Post that, OpenAI has released GPT-5.2 and a new image generation model. OpenAI also boasted about its growing enterprise use and said the ChatGPT messages volume has grown 8x since November 2024.
While Google didn’t directly address the competition with OpenAI, it said that the release of new models is challenging all companies to be active.
“Just about what’s happening across the industry is like all of these models are continuing to be awesome, challenge each other, push the frontier. And I think what’s also awesome is as companies are releasing these models,” Doshi said.
“We’re also introducing new benchmarks and new ways of evaluating these models. And so that’s also encouraging us.”