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Good morning and welcome back. In today’s newsletter:
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Nvidia blows past Wall St expectations
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Europe’s plug-in hybrid car war
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Rachel Reeves faces pressure on ‘mansion tax’
We begin with Nvidia, whose sales of chips at the heart of the artificial intelligence boom in the last quarter rose even faster than Wall Street anticipated.
Bumper chip demand: The world’s most valuable company reported its revenue rose 62 per cent year on year to $57bn in the three months to the end of October, beating consensus estimates. Nvidia’s revenue forecast for the current quarter was $65bn, about $3bn more than Wall Street expected.
Market reaction: The AI bellwether’s shares climbed about 5 per cent in after-hours trading. Asian markets rose today, with Japan’s exporter-heavy Nikkei 225 index up about 3 per cent and South Korea’s Kospi advancing also around 3 per cent.
Bubble? What bubble?: Chief executive Jensen Huang shrugged off market anxiety about the durability of AI spending after hundreds of billions of dollars were wiped from the value of tech stocks in recent weeks.
“There has been a lot of talk about an AI bubble. From our vantage point we see something very different,” Huang told analysts yesterday. Read the full story.
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More market news: Domestic investors have fled the UK stock market at a record rate this year, missing out on a rally.
Here’s what else we’re keeping tabs on today:
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Economic data: The UK releases November data on young people not in education, employment or training.
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Belgium: The EU-Indo-Pacific ministerial forum starts in Brussels and runs until tomorrow.
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US: The funeral of former vice-president Dick Cheney is held at the Washington National Cathedral.
Five more top stories
1. BYD and other Chinese carmakers are spearheading a revival of plug-in hybrids in Europe, opening a new battleground with western rivals. Hit by tariffs on electric vehicles, Chinese auto groups have pivoted to the segment, selling cheaper but technologically advanced units.
2. UK chancellor Rachel Reeves, days before her second Budget, is facing pressure from Labour MPs in London and the south-east to scale back the scope of a proposed “mansion tax”.
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FT Magazine: Reeves, as she prepares next week’s Budget, is at the centre of a political storm. Could the crisis consume her and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer?
3. Members of the Federal Reserve’s rate-setting committee expressed “strongly differing views” over whether to cut interest rates next month, according to minutes of the US central bank’s October meeting. Read what the diverging monetary policy opinions mean.
4. Exclusive: Partner promotions at the Big Four accounting firms in the UK hit a five-year low for the 2025 cycle. The decline reflects the sector’s struggle to protect profits as slowing demand for consulting services erodes revenues. Read the details.
5. Exclusive: Asda has raised close to £600mn from two sale-and-leaseback deals as its private equity owner TDR Capital uses the supermarket chain’s property assets to bolster its finances ahead of a looming debt repayment to previous owner Walmart.
Join us in December for the ninth edition of The Global Boardroom, a three-day event bringing together leaders in business, policy and finance including Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey and European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde. Register here.
The Big Read
© FT montage/Dreamstime
EU officials paused the rollout of landmark AI legislation after fierce criticism from businesses. Can Brussels balance its push to set guardrails with its need to attract investment?
We’re also reading . . .
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Sims rebellion: Players of the video game, which is popular among women, people of colour and the LGBT+ community, are protesting against a Saudi-led deal to acquire parent company Electronic Arts.
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Warner Bros: Billionaire father and son Larry and David Ellison are flashing cash to overcome rivals Netflix and Comcast in their pursuit of the Hollywood studio.
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G20 in South Africa: Trump’s boycott of the Johannesburg summit casts a shadow over the future of the forum.
Chart of the day
More than two in five universities in England will fail to balance their books next year despite an inflation-linked rise in tuition fees, a regulator has warned. Read more on the financial strains higher education is facing.
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Take a break from the news . . .
Maria Crawford, the FT’s deputy books editor, shares her selection of this year’s best fiction, including Dream Count, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s polyphonic tale of four women living in the US, and Susan Choi’s generational saga Flashlight.
