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Sephora continues to outperform in a slowing luxury environment, with revenues reaching €16bn and management guiding toward €20bn “in the near future.” The retailer remains LVMH’s strongest engine of growth, benefiting from record foot traffic, aggressive store refreshes, exclusive brand launches (e.g., Rhode), and rising demand across fragrance, Gen Z, men’s grooming, and emerging Gen Alpha segments.

Despite intensifying competition from Amazon, Ulta and TikTok Shop, Sephora is expanding logistics capacity (new automated U.S. warehouse), deepening its influencer ecosystem, and rolling out new monetisation tools such as My Sephora Storefront. Stores still represent ~2/3 of sales, with management highlighting younger consumers’ renewed appetite for experiential retail.

In the $450 billion global beauty market, there is no business with as much cultural impact as the LVMH-owned retailer. Executives have a plan to make sure it stays on top.

Of all the Sephora stores that have gone through the beauty retailer’s new redesign, the Champs-Élysées flagship in Paris is probably the most glam. There’s a long red carpet, high ceilings and a giant table for everything that’s trending on social media.

“They say that this store gets more visits than the Eiffel Tower,” Deborah Yeh, Sephora’s global chief marketing officer, says as we walk through the crowded boutique on a fall afternoon. We stroll past a fragrance section where perfume bottles stand proudly on their own tables, begging to be spritzed. Hair care has moved to the front of the store; makeover chairs, once near the front, now sit in the middle of the floor.

Outside, the city is locked in a state of unrest. The French government has collapsed, with protesters shutting down streets over budget cuts and workers threatening to strike. Inside, women are dabbing moisturizers, sampling eye shadows and swabbing lipsticks.

“When things are bad, we turn to things that actually give us small comforts and joy,” Yeh says. It’s why lipstick and perfume reliably sell in times of economic turmoil. The day before, I’d heard something similar from Catherine Spindler, president of Sephora Europe and the Middle East, who was gearing up for SEPHORiA, the company’s multicity event for beauty fanatics.

“We provide that taste of something positive, something colorful in difficult times,” Spindler says, sitting in a Paris convention center that was being transformed into a Coachella-style festival, with carnival games, photo booths, matcha drinks and samples upon samples of cosmetics meant to make attendees look, feel and smell amazing. “It’s a destination of happiness.”

Owned by the French conglomerate LVMH, 56-year-old Sephora is the world’s largest “prestige” retailer of cosmetics, skin care, hair products and perfume. It’s a place of discovery for beauty fans who are constantly on the hunt for the next great thing, encouraging customers to test before they buy.

In a luxury downturn that’s lasted more than a year, Sephora remains a bright spot in the LVMH portfolio. The company saw record earnings in 2024, with LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault boasting to analysts this past January that he couldn’t share the full profits LVMH has reaped from the beauty retailer over the decades “because you would not believe them.”

The $450 billion global beauty industry is now at a crossroads. Titans like Estée Lauder and L’Oréal are contending with shifting consumer tastes. Buzzy new beauty brands are arriving faster than ever, reshaping the map of influence. Just two years after launching its beauty division, LVMH rival Kering sold it to L’Oréal in mid-October. In the fall, Reuters reported LVMH was looking to sell its stake in Fenty Beauty, the cosmetics label it created in 2017 with the singer Rihanna. LVMH declined to comment on the matter.

Sephora faces steep competition: Amazon has been pulling in shoppers with discounts, and the more-accessible Ulta Beauty has been gaining market share. The arrival of TikTok Shop and affiliate companies like ShopMy are also chipping away at Sephora’s profits.

But in the global beauty arms race, Sephora intends to stay on top by focusing on its customer experience.

Sephora’s new stores resemble nothing so much as Sephora’s old stores. This is true even of the Champs-Élysées location. The lighting is bright, the space is bathed in the company’s signature black-and-white, and the line is as long as ever. “We feel that our focus on creating a sense of uniformity in our stores has proven worthwhile,” a Sephora spokeswoman later writes in an email.

I watch a trio of girls laugh at horny Tom Ford fragrance names and a woman with a gray bob hum to herself as she tests blushes. A mom waiting in the checkout line is so locked into browsing the minis section, she doesn’t notice her baby is missing a sock.

“Every square inch of this place has to be productive,” Yeh says. “Everything is a little jewel.”

GUILLAUME MOTTE, Sephora’s global president and CEO, appears triumphant when we meet at Sephora’s San Francisco headquarters in September.

Hailey Bieber’s Rhode brand had just debuted at Sephora, drawing crowds eager to take selfies and try on lip gloss. Sephora North America CEO Artemis Patrick, who is sitting next to Motte at a conference table, says it’s the biggest launch in her region to date.

“We’re not naive about competition,” Motte says. “But Sephora is winning.”

Sephora experienced “exceptional” growth in 2023 and 2024, he says. Revenue hit €16 billion, or about $18.5 billion, he says, referring to figures Arnault shared in April. The market is slowing, Motte says, but he predicts Sephora will reach €20 billion (approximately $23 billion) in annual sales “in the near future.”

Sephora has 3,400 stores around the world, with over 600 in the U.S. alone. It sells around 300 upscale beauty brands in the U.S., half of which you can’t find in other stores. Its little black-and-white shopping bags are inescapable.

Landing inside Sephora remains a beauty founder’s dream. “They are the best at getting people excited,” says Dianna Cohen, founder of the hair-care brand Crown Affair.

Still, there are plenty of other places to buy ridiculously overpriced moisturizers. And lately, it feels as though everyone is getting into the beauty business—even Old Navy.

In 2024, Sephora had 9% of American beauty and personal-care market share online, per market research firm Euromonitor, a slight dip from 2023. Amazon, by contrast, nabbed 47% of online market share last year.

So Sephora has stepped up its defense—and its offense. It wrote checks in 2025 for major marketing moments with Hulu and the WNBA; basketball fans visiting the Chase Center in San Francisco can now shop for Tatcha lip masks and Sol de Janeiro Bum Bum cream at Sephora kiosks in the arena between quarters. It’s currently building a new warehouse in Avon, Indiana, set to open in the spring, that is fully automated, Patrick says. “A lot of robots.”

This fall, Sephora introduced a new platform, My Sephora Storefront, in the U.S., which allows the retailer to make money directly from influencer recommendations and cuts out affiliate companies.

It’s refreshing its stores, where about two-thirds of the company’s sales still come from, and adding smaller shops to meet demand in areas where it already has a presence, like Brooklyn, Queens and Toronto. “Gen Z loves stores, they love the experience,” Motte says. “Boring retail is dead, attractive retail is alive, and that’s our business.”

Sephora is also doubling down on booming categories like fragrance, which has helped the retailer score points with teen boys.

“There are men coming to our stores, and they aren’t falling asleep by the beauty studio,” says Carolyn Bojanowski, executive vice president of merchandising for North America. “I never thought I’d see that happen.”

WHEN LVMH BOUGHT a chain of French beauty boutiques in 1997, dominating the fragrance market was top of mind. The luxury giant had been snapping up brands with in-house perfumes, like Givenchy and Kenzo.

It bought the French fragrance house Guerlain and had already absorbed the Parfums Christian Dior business, previously owned by Arnault’s company Financière Agache, when Louis Vuitton and Moët Hennessy merged in 1987. By adding Sephora to its arsenal, the group boasted in a statement at the time, LVMH became “the world’s leading distributor of perfumes and beauty products.”

Sephora arrived in the U.S. the following year. “The big guys at the time—Clinique, Lauder and Lancôme—wouldn’t sell to us,” Bojanowski says. “But we found little niche and cool brands,” like Stila and Urban Decay.

Department stores used to be the front line of high-end makeup; sales associates would open glass cases and supervise the browsing experience. Sephora gave shoppers free rein to schmear on lipstick and play with eye shadow. Starting in 1999, they could also order beauty products online and try them at home.

Sephora was savvy about building a relationship with the beauty enthusiast and developed a cult following. But what set the company apart was its selection of beauty products, which it secures through exclusivity deals. According to brand founders who have worked with Sephora, the retailer typically asks new brands for a two-year agreement; Sephora declined to comment on this. Motte won’t say how its deals are structured, but founders say they typically split revenue 40/60 with Sephora. Some say they have negotiated better rates.

The retailer holds the power to accelerate a brand’s profile with catchy social content and store events. Its army of Sephora Squad influencers helps products take off on TikTok, and its LVMH real estate budget means its storefronts, often in high-end malls and in elite cities, are right next to luxury boutiques.

Alicia Scott, the founder and CEO of Range Beauty, a makeup brand for ultrasensitive skin, joined the U.S. Sephora Accelerate program for founders of color in 2023. She said she felt Sephora understood the best ways to market niche products like hers. “There’s intention and learnings that you don’t see at other retailers.”

It takes significant investment for brands to succeed at Sephora. There’s the cost of covering inventory and store displays, but there are also “hidden fees,” says Camille Moore, a brand strategist. Brands pay for field teams to work the Sephora floor on their behalf, since competition inside stores is fierce. Founders say seasonal “animation” ads that promote their labels cost extra, too. Moore says the charges are hard on indie labels, estimating brands must make over $9 million in order to not lose money on a Sephora partnership. She recalled one client telling her they were spending about $4 million just on Sephora samples.

A Sephora spokesperson said the company “is laser-focused on helping all of our brands succeed and provides customized tools, teams and resources to help our brands continue to grow and prosper.” Founders say that the company is especially helpful “in the kitchen,” their term for working with Sephora on product development.

“We sit for hours, discussing category launch ideas, product launch ideas,” says Kimberley Ho, co-founder of the tween skin-care brand Evereden.

Sephora sits on a treasure trove of consumer insights that it shares with its beauty brands, Ho says. She recalls seeking Sephora’s guidance on a vanilla fragrance mist. Was it a scent customers would want? The company confirmed that “vanilla” was a popular search and sent other trending suggestions, too.

Ho says she puts her faith in Sephora because it identifies “future trends of consumers faster than any other retailer.” Sephora was planning for the current explosion of body mists as early as 2021, she says.

A decade ago, working with Sephora usually meant getting a step closer to a billion-dollar exit. But the glut of new brands has made it harder to compete, especially on Sephora shelves, says Moj Mahdara, a beauty entrepreneur who runs the venture-capital firm Kinship Ventures with Gwyneth Paltrow.

“Beauty is going through a renaissance right now, and it’s a little bit of a s— show,” says Mahdara. For brands to rise to the top of Sephora’s charts, Mahdara says, “you gotta shake hands and kiss babies.”

AT THE COMPANY’S IMMERSIVE SEPHORiA event in Paris, attendees in their 20s and 30s are bedazzling tubs of cream from Kiehl’s, dousing themselves in setting spray from Patrick Starrr’s One Size and globbing on lip gloss from Fenty Beauty. A woman with the prettiest eyelashes I’ve ever seen shows me a triple-layer strawberry lip mask from Laneige that she thinks I will “looove.” It smells like it could give me diabetes.

“I just saw Mona! Mona is here!” Maam Essan, a 23-year-old Parisian, gushes at the sight of Mona Kattan, the sister of beauty mogul Huda Kattan. Mona is taking selfies near a claw machine dispensing products from her fragrance line, Kayali.

Sephora is constantly courting rising beauty stars to get their products on its shelves. It prides itself on being first to the next big thing in beauty, says Bojanowski. It’s a strategy that involves her team combing social media and sliding into founders’ DMs.

The company has bet on the wrong horse before, like hair extensions and supplements. Now Sephora sees a new opportunity in Korean skin care, Bojanowski says, and is selling a slew of products from the country, like collagen sheet masks and ceramide face creams. It’s also bullish on color cosmetics fronted by celebrity makeup artists like Hung Vanngo (who works with Selena Gomez) and Mary Phillips (who does Kendall Jenner’s makeup). Yes, the contour palette is back, though Patrick says “no-makeup makeup” is still very much here.

Rihanna created her cosmetics brand Fenty Beauty in 2017 with LVMH, the French conglomerate that owns Sephora. GHOST/Shutterstock

Sephora also sees Gen X—women 45 to 60—as the “next big wave,” says Bojanowski.

“The Golden Girls and the Sex and the City ladies are allegedly the same age,” she says, laughing. “The definitions of beauty standards and aging gracefully have really evolved. It’s a big opportunity.”

Then there’s the teens and tweens, a cohort that makes Motte and Patrick noticeably cautious. Young shoppers have swarmed Sephora stores in pursuit of skin-care products, including antiaging creams. “We haven’t targeted the teens; they came to us,” Motte says.

Those Sephora tween birthday parties I’ve seen on TikTok are actually “not sanctioned,” Patrick says. When I ask if Sephora will launch an official birthday program, like the one Ulta Beauty debuted over the summer, Motte says, “No. No, no, no.”

The company is concerned that teens might buy products that are unsafe for them, he explains. Still, there has been a “business discussion” to make sure Sephora’s sales associates can steer clients in the right direction and “advise the best products that are suitable for their skin,” he says.

That means new Gen Alpha brands at Sephora. It launched Ho’s kids’ brand, Evereden, in U.S. stores in October. A month earlier, it debuted the tween label Sincerely Yours, with the 16-year-old influencer Salish Matter.

“When we went to Fresno [California] to see one of my best friends, I used a hotel face wash and my skin got really irritated, and that’s kind of how it got started,” Salish says over Zoom. She tells me that when she hosted a meetup at a New Jersey mall in September, 87,000 screaming fans had mobbed the place.

“I was hoping for, like, 500 people,” Salish says. “I was mind-blown.”

Setting unrealistic EV regulations only to adjust them when consumers do not show up is a recipe for turmoil

Europe’s car industry is watching Brussels with concern — again. The European Commission plans to unveil new rules for the transition to electric vehicles, including the evolution of carbon emissions targets. The current rules dictate a rapid shift to EVs. The elephant in the room is that European customers — both individuals and businesses — simply are not buying EVs in big numbers. 

Brussels is not alone in issuing regulations that are out of step with market reality. The UK government recently announced a new tax to charge EV drivers 3p for every mile driven, while at the same time offering a discount of up to £3,750 on a new EV. One foot on the gas, one on the brake: these kinds of contradictions leave buyers confused and frustrated. 

European policymakers say they want a sustainable auto industry. But setting unrealistic regulations only to adjust them at the end of each year when consumers do not show up is a recipe for turmoil. This approach disrupts a complex cycle of product design, engineering and supply chains that require long lead times and billions in investment. We urgently need a regulatory framework for Europe that provides a realistic and reliable 10-year planning horizon. 

On one side, we face the world’s most aggressive carbon mandates, regulations that demand a pace of electrification that is decoupled from the reality of consumer demand. On the other, we face a flood of state-subsidised EV imports from China, structurally designed to undercut European labour and manufacturing.

China has more than enough manufacturing overcapacity to sell to every new vehicle customer in Europe. Chinese brands have doubled their market share in the region in just 12 months, reaching a record 5.5 per cent in August. Meanwhile, the market share of EVs in the EU has stagnated at about 16 per cent — well behind the 25 per cent required to meet Brussels’ 2025 targets. 

EU vehicle production is now 3mn units below pre-Covid levels. Plants are going dark. In 2024 alone, 90,000 jobs in the automotive industry evaporated. These are the kinds of jobs that sustain European social stability. This is not a transition. It’s more like a wind-down of Europe’s automotive industry.

To be clear, the industry is not asking for a bailout. We are not asking for protectionism to shield inefficiency. At Ford, we will continue to do the hard work of restructuring. We have closed legacy facilities, reduced our workforce and slimmed down costs to become more agile. We have invested billions in transforming our manufacturing operations in Europe and offer our customers greater choice in making the shift to an electric or hybrid vehicle.

But if Europe wants to avoid becoming a museum of 20th-century manufacturing, we need an urgent reset and a long-term plan.

The approach to regulation — mandate it and they will buy it — has failed. We must align carbon targets with actual market adoption and provide automakers with a realistic and reliable 10-year horizon. This includes giving consumers the option to drive hybrid vehicles for longer, bridging the gap rather than forcing a leap to EVs they aren’t ready to take.  

We need to incentivise this transition. European manufacturers have invested hundreds of billions in EVs. Governments must match that commitment with consistent incentives to buy them and a charging infrastructure that extends beyond wealthy urban centres into rural areas. 

The current approach to commercial vehicles is a tax on the backbone of Europe’s economy. Only 8 per cent of new vans are electric, yet regulations treat them like luxury sedans. These are tools for plumbers, florists and builders. Aggressive carbon targets on commercial vehicles unfairly penalise the small and medium-sized businesses that generate more than 50 per cent of Europe’s GDP. 

Ford has called Europe home for more than 100 years. We want to be part of its green future and we plan to keep investing. But Europe faces a binary choice. It can foster a thriving, competitive auto industry that leads the world in green technology. Or it can cling to unachievable targets and watch as its market is dominated by imports while its own factories rust. 

Alexander Wynaendts has reduced his other board commitments after investor criticism

Deutsche Bank is seeking to increase the pay of its supervisory board chair by more than 40 per cent, despite Alexander Wynaendts already being the highest-paid chair of Germany’s blue-chip Dax companies.

The country’s largest lender plans to ask shareholders at its 2026 annual meeting to approve an increase in Wynaendts’ total supervisory board pay to about €1.4mn, up from €950,000 for 2024, three people briefed on the plans said.

His pay already exceeded that of any of his peers in the Dax 40 last year, with Allianz chair Michael Diekmann earning about €760,000 and Volkswagen’s Hans Dieter Pötsch on around €680,000.

Part of the planned increase would come from raising fixed pay for the chair by between 10 and 20 per cent, a change that would also lift the basic remuneration for other supervisory board members, one person familiar with the discussions said.

The rest would stem from changes to how committee work is remunerated. The chair currently does not receive any additional pay for chairing committees, while other supervisory board members receive between €100,000 and €150,000 per committee they lead.

Wynaendts heads both the chairman’s committee and the nomination committee and is expected to continue in those roles.

The proposal had not yet been finalised and would be put forward along with other resolutions when Deutsche publishes the notice of its 2026 shareholder meeting, the people added.

Both the bank and Wynaendts declined to comment.

A person familiar with Deutsche’s position said the planned pay rise was aimed at keeping the role competitive internationally, arguing that chairs of supervisory or non-executive boards at other large European banks earn significantly more than Wynaendts.

Wynaendts had been criticised by some investors for holding too many mandates alongside what they viewed as a demanding position at Deutsche.

In response, Wynaendts stepped down as chair of Dutch investment company Puissance Holding, according to a person briefed on the matter, although he remains on the board. He also continues to sit on the boards of Air France-KLM and Uber Technologies.

Brendan Nelson, who was last week confirmed as the chair of Europe’s largest lender HSBC, is paid £1.5mn (€1.7mn) for a role regarded as one of the toughest in banking. Nelson receives no additional fees for his other roles at the bank.

Formerly chief executive of Dutch insurer Aegon, Wynaendts took over as chair of Deutsche in 2022 after years of scandals, litigation and restructuring at Deutsche.

Since his appointment in May that year, the bank’s profitability and share price have recovered and its performance has moved closer to that of large European rivals.

Wynaendts is now grappling with fresh legal fallout from a scandal dating back more than a decade, which relates to Deutsche’s involvement in structuring trades for Monte dei Paschi di Siena.

Several former Deutsche managers have launched claims against the lender, alleging that its actions damaged their careers.

One former senior banker, Dario Schiraldi, is suing Deutsche for €152mn in Frankfurt, while five others have filed lawsuits in London’s High Court seeking hundreds of millions of pounds in damages.

Michael Saylor’s financial engineering inspired dozens of imitators but is now close to unravelling

Two weeks after posting an AI-generated picture of himself fleeing a sinking ship, Michael Saylor last Monday floated a once unthinkable idea: that his company Strategy might soon sell some of its 650,000 bitcoins.

The prospect of one of bitcoin’s most outspoken evangelists offloading the tokens shows how gravely the recent digital asset slump threatens the crypto-financial machine that Saylor has built.

At the heart of his predicament is the quickly narrowing gap between Strategy’s valuation in the stock market and the value of the bitcoin on its balance sheet.

The premium which Strategy’s stock commands over its bitcoin holdings has dropped to a five-year low — its shares have fallen far faster than the cryptocurrency — and is at risk of disappearing altogether.

If the premium vanishes, Strategy’s “entire business model breaks”, said David Krause, emeritus associate professor of finance at Marquette University.

“It’s like a flywheel that only works when investors are willing to pay more than the bitcoin is worth,” Krause wrote in a recent paper. When the premium disappears, “that flywheel reverses.”

Saylor’s success in transforming a sleepy enterprise software company into a moneymaking juggernaut fuelled by bitcoin has led to a posse of imitators, turning public companies into crypto-hoarders. The crypto sell-off is now exposing their financial weakness.

While the stock traded at a large premium, Strategy sold tens of billions of dollars of convertible bonds, common stock and other equity-linked instruments to fund its bitcoin-buying spree.

Its relentless accumulation of the world’s most valuable digital asset propelled its shares 1,200 per cent higher since its first purchase in 2020.

But after peaking at a $127bn valuation in July, its share price has plunged nearly 60 per cent. That has left Strategy with an enterprise value just 1.16 times its bitcoin holdings, having been worth twice as much in June.

Saylor has acknowledged the premium’s crucial role. As long as Strategy’s enterprise value exceeds its net asset value, “the most efficient thing . . . to do is to sell the equity”, Saylor said in a presentation last week.

If the company traded at a discount, he added that “yes, we could sell the bitcoin.”

Saylor has long measured the company’s success through a metric he created, Strategy’s so-called bitcoin per share. While the premium lasts, each new share issued to fund bitcoin purchases boosts shareholders’ bitcoin per share.

That model has come under increasing strain as Strategy’s share price has slumped. The company has warned it could incur a $5.5bn net loss if bitcoin were to end the year at $85,000. The company previously forecast it would trade at $150,000 by year’s end.

Its decision to launch a huge US dollar reserve to cover its dividend payments marked another U-turn for a company whose widely imitated business model centres on bitcoin being the only form of currency worth holding.

“It’s pure comedy,” said one US hedge fund chief investment officer who had bet against Strategy earlier this year.

Investors who had bet on Strategy’s premium eventually collapsing — by going long bitcoin while shorting the company’s shares — have profited from the decline.

New York-based hedge fund Kerrisdale Capital was among the first investment groups to enter the trade, calling out Strategy’s voracious appetite for capital and what it described as the company’s “bloated” valuation in March 2024. Jim Chanos, one of Wall Street’s best-known short sellers, closed his short-Strategy, long-bitcoin trade after 11 months in November.

Strategy did not respond to a request for comment.

Saylor’s most fervent fans have dismissed suggestions that his recent pivot to amassing dollars amounted to an admission of defeat.

“Is this what he wanted to do? Absolutely not. But [the announcements] are still steps and bridges and tools to get to the end goal: to accumulate more and more bitcoin,” said Ed Juline, Strategy’s former director of bitcoin advocacy. “Saylor’s a genius and 100 per cent committed to what he’s doing.”

For the time being, the dividend and coupon payments owed on Strategy’s various debt instruments are covered for 19 months by its new $1.4bn US dollar reserve, according to Saylor.

Much depends on how the crypto market performs. Brett Knoblauch, a crypto analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald, said in a note it would “not take much for Strategy’s [premium] to revert higher, which would then spur more capital raising and bitcoin accumulation”.

“The most obvious catalyst would be for bitcoin to break out above [all-time highs] of around $125,000,” he added.

Equally, further falls in crypto or a protracted loss of its premium would leave Strategy stalled — burning cash to meet its obligations and constrained in its ability to raise new capital.

Looming over the company is MSCI’s upcoming decision on whether to exclude from its indices Strategy and other bitcoin treasury companies that resemble investment funds.

That ruling could prove “pivotal,” JPMorgan analyst Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou wrote in a note to clients late last month. He estimated that being dropped from the indices could drain $9bn from the company’s valuation as inflows from index-tracking funds dried up.

Cantor’s Knoblauch last week slashed his 12-month price target for the stock by 60 per cent, even as he warned that investors’ “fear” about Strategy’s direction and narrowing premium “is not warranted”.

Connection priority given to those ready to build in bid to meet clean power 2030 target

Britain’s energy system operator is prioritising hundreds of projects for connection to the electricity grid before 2030 while hundreds of others will be forced to wait under plans to speed up the shift towards lower-carbon electricity.

The National Energy System Operator (Neso), a public body, will announce the results of an overhaul of the queue to access the grid on Monday, after a massive backlog developed under the previous grid connection rules.

Under the new plans, grid connection dates before the end of the decade will be offered to almost one-fifth of the energy and storage projects in the queue, about 131.6 gigawatts out of roughly 700GW.

They have been chosen for their readiness to build and the extent to which they will help meet the government’s target of decarbonising the electricity system by then.

A further 151.3GW will be offered connection dates by 2035, while at least 300GW will not currently be offered to connect before then.

The changes follow huge frustration among industry and government over a massive backlog, which has meant years-long waiting times to connect for many projects.

The current queue of 700GW is about four times more than Britain needs to meet its clean power 2030 target, and is at least one and a half times more than the installed capacity Neso expects will be required by 2050. Britain’s entire current installed capacity is about 110GW.

Officials believe many of those in the existing queue are speculative projects unlikely to get built and are now clogging up the system.

The changes are likely to be welcomed by developers whose projects are being prioritised and should lead to a smoother system.

However, they are likely to infuriate and potentially bring legal challenges from developers who feel their projects have been unfairly downgraded.

One industry source said there would be “winners and losers” from the overhaul. Another warned: “There are going to be some smaller [generation] developers that are completely screwed by this process.”

The bulk of those getting connection dates in the first phase are battery projects (34.5GW), followed by offshore wind (32.1GW) and solar (29.9GW).

Meanwhile, Neso says that about 12 per cent (11.8GW) of the almost 100GW of large electricity consumers waiting to connect to the high-voltage transmission system — much of which are data centres — will be offered connection dates by 2030, with the rest by 2035.

This is based on the readiness of projects and network companies, as opposed to their compatibility with clean power targets.

The plan to overhaul the queue for power stations was put in motion by the government at the end of last year, marking a more state interventionist approach to the energy sector.

Neso, which does not build the connections itself, oversees the electricity system and contracts with developers wanting to access the grid.

The connections are built by the owners of the networks, such as the FTSE 100 companies National Grid in England and Wales, and SSE in Scotland. 

One of the industry sources questioned whether the network owners would definitely be able to deliver the connections according to the new plan, given pressures on supply chains.

“It remains to be seen whether the outcome will be worth the process,” they said.

Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, described the reforms as a “once in a generation” process to “clean up the queue and prioritise the projects that are ready to help us deliver clean power by 2030”.

“Accelerating the process of connecting up new projects could unlock up to £15bn of investment in offshore wind alone,” said Barnaby Wharton, RenewableUK’s head of flexibility and grid.

This will “significantly” strengthen Britain’s energy security, he added.

Exports soar despite tensions between Washington and Beijing

China’s year-to-date trade surplus in goods has surpassed $1tn for the first time, as exports boom despite US President Donald Trump’s tariff war.

In the first 11 months of this year, China’s trade surplus in dollar terms was $1.076tn, according to data released on Monday by the country’s customs administration, which covers goods but not services.

China’s trade surplus in goods for the full year in 2024 was just shy of $1tn.

The record surplus comes in the wake of a de-escalation in trade tensions between Washington and Beijing, which agreed a yearlong truce in October.

The large gap between exports and imports has drawn criticism from China’s trading partners, with French President Emmanuel Macron pointing to “unbearable” imbalances on a visit to China last week.

China’s exports rose 5.9 per cent in November on a year earlier, while imports added 1.9 per cent, leading to a surplus of $112bn for the month.

Exports to the US have cratered in recent months, and fell 29 per cent in November year on year.

But shipments to other regions, especially south-east Asia, have grown rapidly. Economists believe some of these shipments to south-east Asia, which added 8 per cent last month, are later trans-shipped to the US.

“I think the crux of the matter . . . is that the US hasn’t clamped down on trans-shipments of goods via third-party countries,” said Carlos Casanova, chief Asia economist at UBP.

He added that US demand had been “stable”.

“Because you don’t see a decline in US demand, the region continues to see a surge in exports, and China is benefiting indirectly from that,” he said.

Xi Jinping’s government has relied heavily on exports to drive economic activity amid weak domestic demand and a property slowdown now entering its fifth year.

China was poised to increase its share of global exports to 16.5 per cent by 2030, from 15 per cent now, Morgan Stanley analysts said in a report, adding that they doubted increasing protectionist measures from trading partners could halt this advance.

“Given its dominant position in high-growth emerging sectors like EVs, batteries, and robotics, we believe China will continue to strengthen its position in global manufacturing and trade,” the Morgan Stanley analysts led by chief Asia economist Chetan Ahya wrote.

WASHINGTON, Dec 7 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday that he would have a say whether a proposed merger between Netflix and Warner Brothers should go forward, telling reporters the market share of a combined entity could raise concerns.

"I'll be involved in that decision," Trump told reporters as he arrived at the Kennedy Center for its annual awards show.

Netflix (NFLX.O), opens new tab on Friday agreed to buy Warner Bros Discovery's (WBD.O), opens new tab TV, film studios and streaming division for $72 billion, a deal that would hand control of one of Hollywood's most prized assets to the streaming pioneer.

Trump did not say whether he favored approval for the deal, but he pointed to a potential concentration of market power in the entertainment industry.

"That's going to be for some economists to tell…. But it is a big market share. There's no question it could be a problem," Trump said.

Deal for data-infrastructure company could come as soon as Monday

International Business Machines is in advanced talks to acquire data-infrastructure company Confluent CFLT -0.90%decrease; red down pointing triangle for around $11 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

A deal could be announced as soon as Monday, the people said, cautioning that the talks could still fall apart.

Confluent had a market value of around $8 billion as of Friday, while IBM’s was around $290 billion.

Confluent provides technology that helps manage streams of real-time data used in big artificial-intelligence models. An AI boom has boosted the need for its capabilities from companies in sectors including retail, technology and financial services.

An acquisition of Confluent would be the biggest deal for IBM in recent memory as it repositions its business around AI.

Last year, it agreed to buy cloud-software provider HashiCorp for $6.4 billion, in a deal that pushed it further into fast-growing cloud and AI offerings.

In October, IBM posted higher revenue in the third quarter, boosted by higher-than-expected growth in its consulting business. IBM in November said it would lay off thousands of employees before the end of the year, joining other technology companies that are repositioning themselves in the age of artificial intelligence.

IBM has been competing with Google, Microsoft and a number of startups to build computers that exceed the abilities of the best conventional ones. It is working on larger clusters of quantum chips that it expects will enable large-scale computing in the next five years.

Chief Executive Arvind Krishna recently said IBM has used AI—specifically AI agents—to replace the work of a couple of hundred human-resources workers. That has enabled it to hire more programmers and salespeople.

Technology has been one of the busiest sectors for dealmaking this year. Google parent Alphabet struck a $32 billion deal for cybersecurity startup Wiz. Palo Alto Networks agreed to a $25 billion deal for CyberArk. And Salesforce struck an $8 billion deal for data-management software firm Informatica.