EU lawmakers call for tighter controls on foreign ownership of key ports
There are growing calls from European lawmakers to tighten controls on foreign ownership of the bloc's critical transportation infrastructure. Chinese firms own stakes in more than 30 European ports and some EU officials see this is as a security concern. William Denselow reports.
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Business Times
3 hours ago
- Business Times
Europe: Shares dive as Middle East tensions, US involvement fears weigh
EUROPEAN shares skidded to an over one-month low on Thursday as escalating Middle East tensions and fears over potential US involvement rattled investors. The pan-European Stoxx 600 closed down for the third consecutive day with a 0.83 per cent drop to 535.86, its lowest level since May 9. Trading volumes remained thin as US markets were shut for a public holiday. The week-old Iran-Israel conflict showed no signs of de-escalation. Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump kept markets guessing about American involvement in air strikes on Tehran. Markets were hopeful of talks between the US and Iran, and between the European Union and Iran on Friday, leading to a potential de-escalation in tensions. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up Much of the recent nervousness has been in markets centred around crude oil supply shocks, triggered by tensions in the oil-rich Middle East. Oil prices rose on the day and boosted the energy sector by 0.8 per cent, emerging as the session's top performer. Healthcare and utilities were the only other sectors in the green. Conversely, travel and leisure stocks led broader declines and finished 2.3 per cent lower, taking a hit from the soaring oil prices. 'When the main channel is through energy prices, you see some risk aversion and that's what we're seeing across European equities and that explains the subdued performance,' said Lilian Chovin, head of asset allocation at Coutts, referring to the Middle East tensions. Unpredictable policies European central bank decisions this week showed how Trump's unpredictable trade policies are complicating monetary policy. The Bank of England kept rates on hold, as expected, but flagged risks from a weaker labour market and higher energy prices. Britain's FTSE 100, which houses energy giants such as BP and Shell, lost 0.6 per cent. The Swiss National Bank cut rates to zero as expected, while Norway's central bank delivered a surprise 25 basis-point cut, its first reduction in five years. Stocks in Oslo were up 0.7 per cent. The Euro Stoxx Volatility index touched its highest level since May 23 and was at 24.94. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said on Wednesday that inflation in goods prices is expected to go up over the summer as Trump's tariffs work their way to consumers. The mixed signals did not offer markets much clarity on how the Fed plans to navigate the uncertain economic environment. EU officials are increasingly resigned to a 10 per cent rate on 'reciprocal' tariffs being the baseline in any trade deal between the United States and the EU, five sources familiar with the negotiations said. 'We understand Trump's reaction function and the constraints that apply to him and so investors are better able to form forward-looking views compared to two months ago,' Chovin added. Shares in recruitment companies in Europe slid after British recruiter Hays' forecast a more than 57 per cent drop in annual operating profit. Rival firms Randstad Robert Walters and Adecco fell over 4.5 per cent each. Among stocks, Stora Enso jumped 14.7 per cent to top the Stoxx 600 after the Finnish forestry group said it was initiating a strategic review of its Swedish forest assets. REUTERS
CNA
3 hours ago
- CNA
Commentary: WhatsApp's ‘no ads' promise meets Meta's reality
LONDON: It's hard to think of a more extraordinary business deal than Facebook's US$19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp in February 2014. Its creators were outliers. With a lean staff of just a few dozen people, they had no marketing department, no sign on the door, and had spent zero cents from their sole investor, Sequoia Capital. But WhatsApp had 450 million users, mostly outside the US. Founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton also hated ads. They'd spent a combined 20 years working at Yahoo, bonding over their frustration with a business model that sucked up personal data to show us pop-ups. Building ad systems was 'depressing', Koum told me in an interview in mid-2014. But not too depressing to sell their chat service to online ad magnate Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms, just a few months later. Eight of WhatsApp's roughly 50 employees made more than US$100 million off that deal, while Koum gained a net worth of US$6.8 billion. This week, just over a decade later, ads are finally coming to WhatsApp. They'll appear in its Updates (formerly Status) tab, where users post images and videos. Advertisers will also be able to promote Channels there and collect thousands of followers. Meta described the rollout as 'gradual', suggesting WhatsApp users will start to see ads over the coming weeks and months. "THIS TIME IT'S FOR REAL" Zuckerberg has long been under pressure to monetise WhatsApp, a prominent cash sink whose user base has soared to more than 3 billion but which has yet to pay its own way. Now, with Meta's costly push into artificial intelligence (AI), including a US$14.3 billion investment in data labelling startup Scale AI, the company is moving on the last big piece of real estate it can squeeze cash from. (Meta had already begun monetising WhatsApp through business messaging tools and click-to-WhatsApp ads on Facebook and Instagram, but this is the first time ads are appearing inside WhatsApp itself.) Ads fly in the face of what WhatsApp's founders wanted. For a few years after his extraordinary sale, Koum resisted efforts inside Facebook to feature ads on WhatsApp, his co-founder Acton later told me, while Acton himself tried to convince Sheryl Sandberg, then the company's chief operating officer, to introduce a metered-user model. His idea was to charge users a tiny amount, perhaps a tenth of a cent, after a certain large number of free messages were expended and monetise WhatsApp that way. Sandberg stuck by the ad model that already allowed Facebook to print money for years, telling Acton that his idea wouldn't scale. By the time he left the company, Acton knew that he couldn't stop the inevitable. 'At the end of the day, I sold my company,' he said. Still, both internal and public resistance to ads has been enough to make Meta's monetisation plans for WhatsApp a fitful journey over the last decade. Meta's chief marketing officer, Alex Schultz, admitted on LinkedIn that the company had announced ads a few times already. 'This time it's for real,' he added. TECH'S PUREST IDEALS Meta first publicly announced its intention to bring ads to WhatsApp Status in November 2018, then put the plans on hold and nixed them in 2020, before announcing in 2023 that the rollout was back on. The U-turns are down to the staunch views of WhatsApp's founders, who infused company culture even after they vested their stock options and left Meta. WhatsApp users are also accustomed to a clean, ad-free app that keeps their conversations private with end-to-end encryption. When the company tweaked its privacy terms in 2021 to add more business-messaging features, many ditched it for rival apps like Signal and Telegram. Meta had to move slowly. Now it's trying to make up for lost time. It will target ads based on users' country or city, channels they follow and how they interact with ads they see on Status or on sister apps Facebook and Instagram if their accounts are linked. That's less invasive than the targeting done on Facebook or Instagram, but it's still a form of clutter that WhatsApp's founders abhorred. And Zuckerberg could still push for deeper insights as revenue from Status starts to pour in. According to Schultz, 1.5 billion users visit the feature everyday. Meta's investors can rest easy knowing the company has yet another platform to capitalise on as Zuckerberg spends heavily on AI. The rest of us have yet another reminder that tech's most important visionaries can sometimes be as naive as they are idealistic. Sam Altman's efforts to start OpenAI as a nonprofit that lived off donations from benevolent billionaires was arguably a pipe dream, hence his eventual partnership with Microsoft. DeepMind's Demis Hassabis spent years trying to break away from Alphabet's Google, believing the search giant would be willing to spin off a valuable AI lab after spending US$650 million on it. In the end, he was wrong and his company was drawn deeper into Google. Koum and Acton were similarly guileless to think they could sell WhatsApp to one of the world's biggest advertising businesses and avoid ads. Of course, US$19 billion can make even the purest ideals go quiet. In the end, money talks.
CNA
6 hours ago
- CNA
EU says it is probing corporate structure of Musk's X months after xAI deal
The European Union said on Thursday it was seeking more information from Elon Musk's X about changes to its corporate structure, months after the social media platform was bought by xAI in a $33 billion deal. "We are following closely changes in the corporate structure of X, as we would changes in any other designated platform," a spokesperson for the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, said. However, the spokesperson did not confirm an earlier report from Bloomberg News that said regulators were evaluating potential fines on X under the Digital Services Act. Before its summer recess in August, the regulator could announce a fine on X for alleged infractions under the DSA, though delays are possible, Bloomberg reported. Representatives for xAI and X did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. Any firm found in breach of the DSA faces a fine worth up to 6 per cent of its global turnover, and repeat offenders may be banned from operating in Europe altogether. Earlier this month, X highlighted a disclaimer to its blue checkmark in an attempt to head off a possible hefty fine from EU antitrust regulators. The Commission issued preliminary findings under the DSA in July last year that X violated rules on deceptive design, especially by turning the blue checkmark into a paid verification, assigning false credibility to users. X had disagreed with the assessment.
