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The multibillion-dollar deal was announced in May, but the commerce secretary has since pushed the U.A.E. for certain U.S. investments first

WASHINGTON—A multibillion-dollar deal to send Nvidia’s artificial-intelligence chips to the United Arab Emirates is stuck in neutral nearly five months after it was signed, frustrating Chief Executive Jensen Huang and some senior administration officials.

The delays are a setback to Huang and White House AI Czar David Sacks, who hoped to see the deal advance quickly to highlight a new U.S. tech strategy focused on exports, according to people familiar with the matter. They see agreements like the U.A.E. deal as key to the U.S. staying ahead of China in the AI race.

Under the deal, which was announced in May, the U.A.E. promised to invest in the U.S. in exchange for up to several hundred thousand Nvidia chips a year. But the investment hasn’t materialized after months of talks, baffling some administration officials who don’t know the reason for the delay, the people said.

The future of the agreement is largely in the hands of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who initially championed the deal. The Commerce Department’s approval is critical to getting the deal done because the agency has to give Nvidia and others involved permission to send the chips to the U.A.E.

The commerce secretary has pressed the Emiratis to finalize their U.S. investments before his department authorizes the delivery of the chips, some of the people said. Those prolonged conversations have slowed the deal, they said.

This summer, Lutnick and some administration officials also worried about national-security risks because the U.A.E. is close to China. That relationship fueled fears that the chips could benefit China’s AI industry, and held up the deal.

The negotiations have high stakes for Lutnick, who has come under fire for the rollout of tariffs and a new $100,000 fee for applicants seeking H-1B visas popular among tech companies. Tension with Nvidia, the world’s biggest company with a nearly $4.6 trillion market value, could be a major test between the White House and the company.

Huang and various Nvidia executives have complained privately about Lutnick’s tactics and the slow progress to other administration officials, some of the people said. Sacks and others in the administration are also annoyed, they said. One senior administration official said Lutnick hasn’t held up the deal, but other administration officials contended he had slowed the process down.

The U.A.E. is progressing ahead with its agreement using a 1:1 ratio of the nation’s investment in the U.S. in exchange for billions of dollars worth of Nvidia’s chips, the senior administration official said. At least $1 billion will be sent from the U.A.E. to the U.S. in exchange for at least $1 billion worth of Nvidia chips by the end of the year, according to the official. The U.A.E. would have to pay separately for the chips, some other people said.

A senior Nvidia executive said Huang and others haven’t complained and said the company isn’t concerned with how the deal has been handled. White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement that “Sacks and Secretary Lutnick are integral to the President’s AI agenda and are working diligently to get deals done on behalf of the American people.” A spokeswoman for Sacks declined to comment. The U.A.E. Ministry of Foreign Affairs didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Huang has praised Lutnick publicly, saying recently that the commerce secretary is the person he talks to most in the administration. The Nvidia CEO is walking a tightrope between the U.S. and China, trying to keep both countries hooked on chips without getting caught in their trade spat.

Trump praised the U.A.E. chip deal during the first overseas trip of his second term in May, which highlighted U.S. AI technology and hopes other countries would adopt it instead of China’s. The White House at the time said Trump secured over $200 billion in U.S.-U.A.E. deals, including an agreement between both nations to help develop U.S. technology and manufacturing.

The U.A.E committed to investing, building or financing U.S. data centers for training AI models, the White House said at the time. The U.A.E. has also done deals with the Trump family’s crypto venture and is part of the investor group taking control of TikTok’s U.S. operations.

The administration’s discussions with the U.A.E. are the latest example of the president’s team pressing corporations and countries to invest in the U.S.

Lutnick recently negotiated a deal with Japan in which the country agreed to invest $550 billion in the U.S., putting the money into a fund overseen by the commerce secretary. Trump and Lutnick recently used nearly $9 billion in federal grants to take an equity stake in Intel.

Nvidia is also working with Lutnick to get the licenses it needs to send chips to China. Trump and Lutnick asked the company to give the government 15% of the chip sales to China for a chip called the H20 in August, a move that some lawyers say amounts to an illegal export tax.

Under the terms of the U.A.E. agreement, most of the chips would go to U.S. companies operating in the Middle East nation.

Some administration officials have raised issues with the involvement of G42, an Abu Dhabi-based AI firm that is supposed to be part of the agreement, the Journal previously reported. They worry that chips sent directly to G42 could end up being diverted to China. The Commerce Department currently doesn’t plan to approve chips going directly to G42, but it may in the future.

Australia rolls out ‘ghost bats and sharks’ in historic defence spending spree

Canberra undertakes most ambitious military overhaul since the second world war to meet China threat

Australia has embarked on a A$25bn defence spending frenzy, ordering fleets of autonomous aircraft and submarines, Japanese-designed frigates and transforming a key shipyard in what amounts to the country’s biggest military overhaul since the second world war.

The country’s greatest advantage in defence has long been its distance from potential adversaries. But Chinese live-fire naval exercises a few hundred nautical miles off its eastern coast this year made clear it needed to be better prepared.

“Australia faces the most complex, in some ways, the most threatening strategic landscape that we have had since the end of the second world war,” defence minister Richard Marles said in August.

US President Donald Trump has also been putting pressure on global allies, including Australia, to rapidly raise defence spending. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is set to meet Trump on October 20, when the two are expected to discuss defence spending and security in the Indo-Pacific region.

The Australian spending surge follows a landmark review that found the emergence of “major power strategic competition” in the Pacific, marked by an increasingly “ambitious” China, had fundamentally changed the country’s defence needs. It also called for Australia to reduce reliance on its allies for protection.

“The urgencies are clear,” Kurt Campbell, the former US deputy secretary of state, told the National Press Club in Canberra.

Australia has named Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries as preferred bidder on a A$10bn contract to build up to 11 Mogami frigates, part of a A$55bn investment in overhauling the country’s surface fleet that also includes a contract with the UK’s BAE Systems to build Hunter Class frigates in Adelaide.

Last month, it also committed A$12bn to the initial phase of an upgrade to the Henderson shipyard south of Perth to revamp a facility that previously made superyachts to turn out the Japanese-designed frigates and service nuclear-powered submarines.

In the skies, Australia is testing MQ-28A “Ghost Bat” drones, developed under a A$1bn contract with Boeing. The “loyal wingman” drones, which will accompany crewed aircraft, are the first military aircraft designed in the country in more than 50 years, and are part of a A$4.3bn investment in aerial drone capabilities.

Canberra has also locked in a A$1.7bn contract with US defence tech group Anduril to produce a fleet of autonomous underwater vessels, known as “Ghost Sharks”, which will be made in Sydney.

Marles said the vessels could be harnessed for intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and strike missions. “This is a lethal capability,” he said. “This is the world’s leading capability in terms of a long-range, uncrewed autonomous underwater system.”

Leidos, another US defence company, was last month awarded a A$46mn deal to provide operations systems to a A$1.3bn, decade-long anti-drone programme.

Luke Yeaman, chief economist at Commonwealth Bank, said defence spending would rise to 2.25 per cent of GDP by 2028, from around 2 per cent currently. He forecast that figure would rise to 3 per cent within a decade as the trilateral Aukus security pact with the US and UK and other expenditures came online. 

The sheer scale of Aukus — under which Australia will acquire nuclear-powered submarines for the first time — has cast a pall over the defence budget. Yeaman estimated the cost of the deal at between A$268bn and A$368bn by 2050. Albanese has said his government will increase defence expenditure by A$70bn in the coming years.

But some say Canberra is still not spending enough.

“Defence spending is still lax,” said Steve Baxter, founder of defence investment fund Beaten Zone Venture Partners, who said Australia packed the “sense of urgency” of US defence planning. “The strategy is right but it’s not been funded,” he added.

While the bulk of the committed spending has been on submarines and frigates that are vulnerable in modern warfare, Sam Roggeveen, director of the Lowy Institute’s International Security Program, said the government should be focused on shoring up the country’s north.

The defence build-up also highlights Australia’s complicated relationship with China, which is the country’s largest trading partner. Restoring economic ties with Beijing was one of the biggest accomplishments of Albanese’s first term.

“The government is torn between different political goals — the relationship with China but also deterring China,” said Andrew Carr, senior lecturer in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at The Australian National University.

More broadly, Carr said, the government has failed to explain to the public what the new “national defence” posture would mean.

Unlike Japan and Taiwan, Australia was not accustomed to the idea of hostilities close to its shores, he said.

“There’s no discussion on trade-offs between guns and butter or public support for the costs to society if war breaks out,” he said.

Watchmaker’s superbike collaboration shifts diversification drive into higher gear

Richard Mille and Brough Superior show off rare case of a €200,000 luxury motorcycle produced with the input of a watch brand

Luxury watchmakers have long experimented with motorcycle tie-ins, but most have stopped short at limited collaborations or branded one-offs. Partnerships such as the ones by now-defunct watchmaker JeanRichard with MV Agusta,

Jaeger-LeCoultre with racer Valentino Rossi and, more recently, Bvlgari with motorbike brand Ducati, have produced attention-grabbing watches but with little lasting impact.

A more ambitious move has been made by Brough Superior, the boutique motorcycle manufacturer, which has teamed up with Richard Mille to launch the RMB01 — a €200,000, track-only superbike designed in collaboration with the watchmaker. Unlike past branding exercises, this is a full production run of 150 motorcycles, with a third already spoken for.

The RMB01 represents a rare case of a motorcycle designed with the engineering philosophy and signature styling of a specific watchmaker. With its carbon fibre exoskeleton, aerospace-grade components, and design cues echoing Richard Mille’s six- and seven-figure timepieces, the project shows how luxury brands are extending their influence beyond accessories into high-value, high-performance engineering.

With its sci-fi movie styling, the RMB01 is a far cry from the Brough Superior that some will know as the prewar machine on which TE Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”) lost his life 90 years ago after crashing in a Dorset lane.

Engineer George Brough built his first powered two-wheeler in 1919 and soon established a reputation for making “the Rolls-Royce of motorcycles” with his SS80 and SS100 models, both now highly sought-after collector items. A 1929 SS100 fetched £315,100 at auction in 2014.

Brough Superior remained mothballed after the second world war until 2008 when British businessman Mark Upham acquired the rights and partnered with Thierry Henriette, owner of Toulouse-based engineering company Boxer Design, to develop a unique V-twin engine for the revived bikes. Henriette took over the reborn brand in 2013 and has continued to expand the line-up by adding one new model per year.

It was at the Rétromobile classic car show in Paris in 2019 that Richard Mille, the man behind the eponymous watchmaker, got into contact with Brough Superior. “We were exhibiting there and I saw someone come to our stand who began looking at one of our bikes in incredible detail,” recalls Brough Superior executive director Albert Castaigne.

“He spent a really long time examining every visible part and taking in all the design elements, and then someone told me it was Richard Mille. He introduced himself and said he was very interested in seeing how we worked, so we organised a factory visit,” says Castaigne.

After the visit Mille, who owns an exceptional collection of classic grand prix cars and describes the watches that carry his name as “racing machines on the wrist”, expressed an interest in collaborating. But it was another four years before the plan came to fruition.

“He gave us a direction to design something that drew parallels with Richard Mille watches, but emphasised that features should only be included if they had a purpose, not just for the sake of adding them,” says Castaigne.

An initial dozen design ideas were refined down to a machine that, while futuristic, harked back to America’s pared-down board track racers of the 1920s. Earlier this year the final renderings of the RMB01 were revealed. Last week, Brough Superior invited the FT to a specially organised test day at Spain’s Calafat race circuit, 100km south-west of Barcelona.

The multi-piece wheels have been designed to resemble a tourbillon cage, while the angled, hollowed-out shapes of the front forks and rear swingarm refer directly to the lightweight cases of Richard Mille watches. The chassis, meanwhile, takes the form of a carbon fibre exoskeleton from which the 997cc, V-twin engine and integrated six-speed gearbox are suspended, akin to skeletonised movements in the watches.

Other similarities include a clutch cover that resembles one of Richard Mille’s distinctive winding crowns and an instrument binnacle that mimics the view into an RM watch movement — complete with interconnected gears that oscillate when the ignition is switched on, activating the needles for the rev counter and speedo. The graphics are based on those on a typical Richard Mille dial, while the binnacle is bordered by a carbon fibre and titanium bezel featuring top-loading screws similar to those of the watches.

“We did suggest using exactly the same design of screws that make Richard Mille watches so distinctive, but he [Mille] said it was too obvious, so we went for something different,” says Castaigne.

Based in Toulouse — Europe’s aerospace manufacturing capital — Brough Superior has called on multiple small-scale manufacturers to supply aviation-grade components such as wheels and brake calipers, meaning that at least 50 per cent of the bike’s parts are made close to the Brough factory.

In reality, few RMB01 owners are likely to make extensive use of these bikes for the purpose for which they are intended. “It’s a mechanical work of art that’s sufficiently functional dynamically to be impressive when you ride it,” says motorcycle journalist and multiple race winner Alan Cathcart. “But it’s not street legal in any civilised country and I doubt many wealthy owners will want to grapple with it on the track on a regular basis. Thierry Henriette deserves credit for creating what I consider to be the most beautiful Brough Superior of the modern era, and for succeeding in the difficult task of designing the two-wheeled equivalent of a Richard Mille watch.”

Country’s biggest lender will have to share benefits of Berlin’s ambitious spending plans with other European banks

A Deutsche Bank board member once admitted that the lender used to get cheaper funding because investors mistook it for Germany’s central bank. Now, as investors seek winners from Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s ambitious spending plans, Deutsche is benefiting from a similar effect.

Shares in Germany’s biggest bank are up almost 80 per cent so far this year, making it one of the biggest beneficiaries of the Dax index’s recent rally. The long-troubled lender is on the brink of eliminating its discount to book value for the first time since 2008.

Things could get better still, chief executive Christian Sewing believes, thanks to Merz’s so-called “fiscal bazooka”. The logic, persuasive enough, is that this could lift customer deposits while increasing demand for loans and capital markets services. Germany’s GDP could be 2.5 per cent higher by 2035 because of extra infrastructure spending, the European Commission thinks; bank profit ought to expand by multiples of that.

The trouble is, those benefits will also be shared with companies that don’t have “Deutsche” in their names. Others in line for Germany’s fiscal buffet include Italy’s UniCredit and Dutch lender ING. As well as their direct exposure to German companies, UniCredit chief Andrea Orcel recently told investors that any expansion should “have a very strong carry-over on other markets”.

Banks such as Erste and KBC serve companies in central and eastern Europe that are key to supply chains, while capital markets activity from larger corporations would help continental players such as BNP Paribas and Santander.

Enthusiasm has carried Deutsche’s stock so far that it looks expensive compared with rivals. Sewing’s bank now trades at a premium to peers with similarly large deals and securities businesses such as Barclays and BNP, despite a narrower focus on fixed income trading and weaker profitability. 

Even on the important metric of return on tangible equity, which Sewing has rebuilt admirably since taking charge in 2018, rivals are doing better. Deutsche is expected to make a 12 per cent return by 2029, according to Visible Alpha, versus 9.6 per cent this year — but that is still lower than the equivalent forecasts for Barclays and BNP.

That makes it hard to see how Deutsche’s valuation can go much higher. Only about a third of analysts tracked by Bloomberg give Deutsche’s stock a buy recommendation, the lowest proportion since 2022 and the weakest among the 10 largest banks in the Stoxx Europe Banks index. German neighbour Commerzbank, which has been on a similar rollicking rally, is one of the only large banks even less popular with analysts.

Sewing has a chance to convince sceptics at a strategy update next month. His lender would need to lift earnings by a third over the next four years just to keep up with consensus expectations — doable, assuming stimulus efforts really get off the ground.

He may find an extra lift comes from the resurgence of animal spirits around Europe. The bloc’s investment banking fees fell in the first half of the year — and Deutsche only claimed about 4 per cent of them, according to LSEG. But if Merz’s bazooka stokes a risk-taking revival among executives, Sewing has a chance to fight for a bigger share of a growing fee pool, assuming his own aim is up to the task.

Giorgia Meloni’s administration would hit EU target a year earlier than anticipated due to bumper tax revenues

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government expects Italy’s public deficit to fall to 3 per cent of GDP this year due to stronger than expected tax revenues, potentially allowing Rome to exit the EU’s excessive deficit procedure a year earlier than anticipated.

While finance minister Giancarlo Giorgetti had expressed hopes of such a performance in recent public comments, Rome has now officially estimated that its 2025 deficit will drop to 3 per cent, compared to the 3.3 per cent of GDP it had originally forecast. 

The latest projection was included in a public finance planning document that was submitted to the Italian parliament on Thursday night, as part of preparations for hammering out the details of next year’s budget.

Italy’s tax revenues between January and July rose 5 per cent compared to the same period last year, bringing an additional €16bn into state coffers, a jump that economists say reflected robust job growth and inflationary pressures.

However, the European Commission will not assess whether Italy remained within the EU’s 3 per cent deficit threshold until spring 2026, once actual full-year data is available. 

Italy entered the procedure in 2024, which carries an economic stigma and could eventually result in financial sanctions from the EU.

If it does exit the excessive deficit procedure, the finance ministry said it would begin to draw on European funds — of up to €12bn by 2028 — for investment in defence.

While the declining deficit is seen as cause for cheer, economic growth remains muted, despite the massive injection of European funds from the EU’s Covid-19 recovery programme, of which Italy is the largest single recipient.

In its projections on Thursday, Meloni’s government estimated that the Italian economy will grow just 0.5 per cent this year, as exporters wrestle with the impact of US President Donald Trump’s tariff blitz. 

Economic momentum is expected to pick up slightly over the next few years, however, with the government projecting an expansion of GDP growth of 0.7 per cent in 2026, 0.8 per cent in 2027 and 0.9 per cent in 2028.

Though Italy was once seen as Europe’s byword for fiscal profligacy, Meloni’s government has been lauded for its efforts at fiscal discipline, which has helped to sharply lower the spread between Italian and German debt — and eased Rome’s borrowing costs.

However, Francesco Giavazzi, who served as economic adviser to former prime minister Mario Draghi, said Italy’s improved public finances had been enabled by inflationary pressures and came at the cost of the purchasing power of many households.

Inflation, he said, had led to many Italians obtaining pay rises that in turn pushed them into higher tax brackets, resulting in what he called “tax bracket creep”. 

“The people are paying for this because they are paying more taxes,” Giavazzi said. “It’s a fiscal correction equivalent to one implemented by raising taxes, but it’s a hidden one because the people don’t see it. It’s not a law passed in parliament — inflation does the job for you.”

With their higher nominal pay, many Italians have also lost access to various subsidies and benefits for the poor, further relieving pressure on the public coffers, but weighing on household incomes. 

“An increase in taxes doesn’t help growth so it’s not surprising that the growth is 0.5,” he said.

In the upcoming budget, Meloni’s coalition government is expected to cut the tax rate for people on middle incomes who earn between €28,000 and €50,000 from the current rate of 35 per cent to 33 per cent.

“We aim to increase families’ spending capacities, in order to bring more serenity to households and boost domestic consumption,” Marco Osnato, who belongs to Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party and chairs the parliament’s finance committee, told the Financial Times.

New approach to credit scoring data could reshape US home lending

Shares of Equifax and Experian sink after Fair Isaac Corp moves to sell its ratings directly to industry data groups

The US company behind Fico homebuyer credit scores revealed plans to sell its ratings directly to industry data companies, thumping the shares of the credit bureaus that typically sell their widely watched numbers.

The move has the potential to disrupt what for decades has been a bedrock of US mortgage lending, but could also ease some of the pressure that Fair Isaac Corp has come under from US government officials who have called it a “monopoly”.

Fair Isaac Corp, based in Bozeman, Montana, said on Wednesday after the market close that it would sell the programme to calculate Fico scores directly to so-called tri-merger resellers, which compile data from the three main credit bureaus — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.

“Today marks a turning point in how credit scores are delivered and priced across the mortgage industry,” Fico chief executive Will Lansing said. “This change eliminates unnecessary mark-ups on the Fico score and puts pricing model choice in the hands of those who use Fico scores to drive mortgage decisions.”

The numbers from credit bureaus are an important factor in whether a lender will make a loan. Fico scores aim to predict the likelihood that a borrower will repay their mortgage.

Typically, credit bureaus gather customer borrowing data and use Fico’s software to calculate a score for lenders to gauge the credit worthiness of a potential homebuyer.

Fico shares closed 18 per cent higher on Wall Street, taking the group’s market capitalisation to almost $43bn.

Shares of the credit bureaus fared poorly. On Wall Street, Equifax dropped almost 8.5 per cent, while TransUnion was down 10.6 per cent. London-listed Experian fell more than 3 per cent.

Analysts predicted that the move would ease pressure on Fico from the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the government agency overseeing mortgage lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

FHFA head Bill Pulte had previously criticised Fico as a “monopoly who has ripped off Americans for decades”.

Jaret Seiberg, a financial research analyst at TD Cowen, said Fico’s new direct licensing move “should reduce the government pressure on Fico’s pricing”.

“That likely takes off the table more radical actions such as using Fannie and Freddie to limit how much Fico may charge or convincing the Justice Department to investigate the company on antitrust grounds,” Seiberg wrote in a note to clients.

Following Fico’s announcement, Pulte posted on X that he appreciated the company “taking Constructive Criticism, which was given in the spirit of ensuring a competitive and safe and sound market”.

Fico said firms still have the choice to work through the credit bureaus.

Influx of younger, more well-off immigrants to French capital leads to upgrading, expansion of Chinese dining options

A set of heavy Chinese wooden doors, slightly incongruous with the classical European streetscapes most associated with Paris, separates Sun Yiwen’s restaurant from the wine and cheese vendors that are traditional culinary landmarks in the French capital.

Visitors crossing its threshold find themselves transported to a world of kaochuan – seasoned meat skewers popular in northeastern China – grilled chicken ribs and frozen pears.

Her restaurant, Tonton Mao – “Uncle Mao” in French – is one of many new establishments rapidly expanding the Chinese culinary footprint in Paris.

The gastronomic capital of Europe now has plenty to offer gourmets searching for authentic Chinese cuisine, reflecting the arrival of a new generation of young, well-off immigrants and the country’s improving image in France.

“Unlike before, Chinese restaurants in Paris now target a different customer group; there are a lot more young people in the city,” Sun said.

Her restaurant’s kaochuan is prepared by chefs flown in from Shenyang, the capital of northeast China’s Liaoning province, and its decor harks back to China in the 1920s and 1930s.

Most Chinese restaurants in France opened by previous generations of immigrants were called traiteurs – caterers in French – and resembled the Chinese restaurants found in the United States or the United Kingdom, offering affordable buffet-style Chinese food adjusted to Western tastes.

At that time, thanks in part to French media reports, there was a general perception of Chinese people being poor and running dirty, chaotic kitchens.

“When I was young, French media did many documentaries on poor Chinese immigrants coming to France, many through the former French colonies in Southeast Asia,” said Julien Tan, a third-generation French-Chinese born and raised in Paris.

These stereotypes were a detriment to immigrant business owners; Tan said he remembers the views of the French public towards Chinese restaurants decades ago, when his parents opened a restaurant in Paris that sold authentic regional cuisine – a rarity in those days.

But now, he said, a new generation of Chinese immigrants is changing things.

China was the third-biggest source of foreign students in France last year, with over 26,000 students studying in Europe’s second-biggest economy, behind only Morocco and Algeria, according to data from Campus France, the national agency that promotes French higher education internationally.

This cohort grew up during China’s economic boom and remain in touch with their country’s culture. With clear memories of home, they demand the same quality level of Chinese food when they are in Paris, creating a new standard for the city’s restaurants to meet

Chen Ruohan is one such student. She arrived in the French capital in 2022, and said she has noticed an increasing number of authentic Chinese restaurants.

Among her favourite additions to Paris’ food scene, she said, is a Chaoshan beef hotpot restaurant that opened last year.

“I’m so happy that they finally have this,” Chen said. “I wish for Paris to keep advancing down this path. Hopefully, one day we can reach New York’s level.”

China’s image has also been changing in France, especially among young fans of Labubu – the toothy, elfin dolls that sparked a worldwide craze – and cutting-edge Chinese tech products.

“There is definitely a rise in China’s soft power; it is going through what Japan went through decades ago,” Tan said. “China is turning from being poor to being chic and fascinating.”

He said locals were now more open to trying authentic Chinese food, which gives restaurateurs more room to try out things that are new and different.

But others said there is still a long way to go for China’s cuisine to reach the familiarity and admiration that others enjoy in Paris.

“In Japanese restaurants you see many French people there by themselves, while in most good Chinese places, they were brought there by their Chinese friends,” Chen said.

But for the Chinese community in the city, especially those who have been there for generations, the current boom of authentic restaurants is a long-overdue moment of pride and recognition for the community.

“The talent and potential have always been there,” Tan said. “Now, finally, they can shine.”

HMRC will no longer reap benefit of share trading in FTSE 100’s largest company

AstraZeneca’s move to directly list its shares in New York could cost the UK as much as £200mn annually in lost stamp duty, the Treasury has privately estimated.

The Cambridge-headquartered pharmaceutical group, the largest company on the FTSE 100 by market capitalisation, said on Monday that it was elevating its New York listing in a plan that would give its UK investors an indirect shareholding of the company.

The move, which has prompted further concerns about London’s status as a global listings centre, will hit state coffers as HM Revenue & Customs will no longer collect any stamp duty related to the trading of the company’s shares in the UK. Treasury officials have estimated the hit to be between £170mn and £200mn, according to people familiar with the situation.

Charles Hall, head of research at Peel Hunt, has also worked on the assumption that the government would face a “£200mn hit to stamp duty from AstraZeneca”.

“That’s a big number just from one company going and they need to be on alert for others,” he said.

Hall said that he had previously warned the government it would face this hit months earlier when there had been speculation AstraZeneca could ditch London for New York, fuelled by Sir Pascal Soriot, chief executive, describing the business as a “very American company”.

The £200mn hit comes as the UK government is urgently seeking to raise money in order to plug its fiscal hole ahead of the Budget in November. AstraZeneca’s move also comes as officials are trying to revive London’s capital markets.

Fundraising from IPOs in London has tumbled to its lowest level in at least 30 years, with less capital raised this year than even the Angolan stock exchange. A string of companies have recently shifted their listings to New York or returned to private ownership.

While AstraZeneca will retain its London and Stockholm listings, remain in the FTSE and keep its headquarters and tax domicile in the UK, the company is replacing the American depositary receipts (ADRs) that until now have given US investors exposure to the company by moving to a full US listing.

ADRs are less liquid and harder to trade than ordinary shares and the new status opens the company up to a broader pool of US shareholders. UK investors will, meanwhile, switch from registered shareholders to holders of AstraZeneca depositary interests instead.

The US does not charge stamp duty on share transactions and AstraZeneca’s circular issued on Monday revealed that because the settlement of trades will happen under the US system, buyers of its shares will not pay stamp duty.

The company’s decision comes as President Donald Trump ratchets up the pressure on the pharmaceutical industry to invest in the US and as drugmakers are locked in a fight with the UK government over pricing.

AstraZeneca’s announcement could also prompt other listed companies with big US businesses and shareholder bases to explore similar steps, equity capital markets analysts have said, which would lead to a further drop in the UK’s stamp duty revenues. 

They also warned that the ability to tap into US liquidity without surrendering FTSE status could in time pave the way for a full-scale move away from the UK for some of the country’s largest companies.

The London Stock Exchange has lobbied for a reform of the stamp duty regime, warning it hinders the UK’s competitiveness. The Treasury is set to give a stamp duty holiday to new listings on the LSE, the Financial Times reported earlier this week.

For 2023-24, Stamp Duty Reserve Tax receipts were close to £2.3bn, down from nearly £2.6bn the year prior, according to government data.

AstraZeneca declined to comment.

The government said: “AstraZeneca’s confirmation that it will stay listed, headquartered and paying tax in the UK brings long-awaited clarity and is good news for jobs, growth and innovation.

“It shows British companies can scale globally, attract international investment — including from US markets — and remain rooted in the UK.”

Aides also flagged the creation of a Listings Taskforce, which they said had been put in place to help government strategically engage with key players in the capital markets and work on ways to make the UK more attractive for listings.