News updates from June 24: Nvidia erases more than $550bn in market value; Zelenskyy sacks senior commander

Julian Assange has reached a plea deal with US prosecutors that would end the WikiLeaks founder’s long-running legal saga over leaked documents and ultimately allow him to walk free after years of incarceration and confinement.

According to court filings on Monday, Assange has agreed with the US Department of Justice to plead guilty to one charge of conspiracy to obtain and disseminate classified information linked to US national defence, in connection with what prosecutors have described as one of the biggest compromises of classified material in the country’s history.

He is scheduled to submit his plea on Wednesday morning in federal court in Saipan, which is part of the Northern Mariana Islands, a US commonwealth north of Guam. Sentencing is set to happen immediately after the plea submission. Assange has already served 62 months in a UK jail and prosecutors are not seeking additional imprisonment.

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The Nasdaq Composite notched its biggest one-day drop in almost two months, as Nvidia led a sell-off among several Big Tech names and countered gains for the broader US stock market.

The tech-heavy index closed 1.1 per cent lower on Monday, its biggest one-day drop since April 30. Shares in Nvidia dropped 6.7 per cent, continuing a recent slide, for their biggest daily fall since mid-April.

Owing to its heavy weighting, Nvidia’s share price moves have a large influence over the direction of stock market indices. Amazon and Microsoft, as well as chip groups Broadcom and AMD, closed lower.

The S&P 500 closed 0.3 per cent lower on Monday, even as about 70 per cent of the benchmark index’s constituents ended the session higher. Energy, up 2.7 per cent, was the gauge’s best-performing sector, while technology and consumer cyclicals were the only two groups nursing declines.

A fall in GameStop shares briefly put famed meme stock trader Keith Gill — better known to followers as Roaring Kitty — into the red on his position in the ailing video games retailer’s shares.

GameStop shares initially surged last month following the return of Gill to social media discussions on the chain, after a three-year hiatus following the subsidence of the 2021 meme stock mania that made him famous.  

On Monday, however, the shares slipped below the $23.4135 Gill paid for his 2.1 per cent holding, according to the most recent June 13 screenshot of his account, posted under his Reddit handle. GameStop shares closed the session at $23.65, above Gill’s threshold but still about one-third above their price before his return.

GameStop used its resurgent fame last month to raise $3.1bn by selling new shares but subsequently disappointed investors by not detailing new plans for the cash at its AGM.

Mary Daly, the president and chief executive of the San Francisco Federal Reserve, has sought to quell concerns that artificial intelligence could negatively impact the US labour market, calling the rapid advancement of the new technology a “natural evolution of the economy”.

Speaking at San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club on Monday, Daly said: “The lion’s share of what we’re hearing is that companies are experimenting with and using it to replace certain tasks, but that doesn’t translate into replacing people.”

She added that “those people can now do different things that are important to the economy and business that they didn’t have time to do before”.

San Francisco has become the centre of the booming AI industry in the last two years, with OpenAI, Anthropic and Cohere all headquartered in the city.

US equities benchmarks were dragged lower by several Big Tech stocks, including Nvidia, whose heavy weighting is exerting a larger influence over the direction of Wall Street’s main indices.

The broad S&P 500 was down 0.1 per cent in Monday afternoon trading, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite was down 0.9 per cent.

Shares in Nvidia, which has recently been jostling with Apple and Microsoft for the title of most valuable company in the world, were down more than 6 per cent. That has resulted in a more than $500bn market capitalisation wipeout for the company’s stock since hitting a record high last week.

Among other Big Tech names, shares in Apple and Meta were up, while Microsoft and Amazon were down. The moves were countering activity elsewhere in the S&P 500, where about three in four stocks were trading higher.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has replaced lieutenant general Yuriy Sodol with brigadier general Andriy Hnatov as commander of the Joint Forces of the Ukrainian Army hours after complaints about Sodol’s conduct were aired publicly by a prominent soldier.

Zelenskyy announced the latest shake-up of the country’s senior military leadership following a meeting with commanders on Monday evening.

The move to sack Sodol, who previously served as commander of the marine corps, came hours after Bohdan Krotevych, chief of staff of the Azov national guard brigade, accused him of working on behalf of Russia and blamed him for the deaths of “thousands” of Ukrainian soldiers under his command. 

Novo Nordisk is investing $4.1bn to expand its US manufacturing and boost production of its blockbuster weight-loss drugs to meet surging demand.

The Danish pharma group said on Monday that the investment will fund a new 1.4mn sq ft manufacturing plant on a site near Raleigh, North Carolina, doubling its size. The extra capacity will come online between 2027 and 2029.

The investment comes as Novo Nordisk competes with rival Eli Lilly for a larger share of the market for a new class of diabetes and weight-loss drugs, known as GLP-1s, which is set to generate $42bn in sales this year and is projected to reach as much as $130bn by 2030.

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Airbus on Monday cut its annual aircraft delivery target, citing persistent supply chain issues, and lowered its earnings forecast for the full year. 

The European plane maker said it would deliver “around 700” aircraft this year, down from a previous target of “around 800” amid what it described as a “degraded operating environment”. The company also pushed back its target to produce 75 of its best-selling A320 family of jets from 2026 to 2027.

Airbus also said it would record a charge of about €900mn in the first six months of the year related to its space business because of ongoing commercial and technical challenges. 

The aerospace and defence group now expects adjusted earnings before interest and tax of €5.5bn this year, down from a previous goal of as much as €7bn.

Goldman Sachs has appointed oil tycoon John Hess to its board of directors, just months after the Wall Street investment bank advised his company on its $53bn takeover by Chevron.

Hess’s appointment, announced on Monday, is the latest change to the bank’s board in the past 12 months, with Goldman veteran David Viniar taking over as lead director from Adebayo Ogunlesi and Tom Montag returning to Goldman to join the board.

The board notably continued to back chief executive David Solomon last year even as he faced criticism over his management of the group and his decision to expand Goldman’s retail banking operations, which the company has now scaled back.

Online fast-fashion group Shein has filed confidential paperwork for an initial public offering with the UK’s markets regulator, said two people familiar with the matter.

The move is taking Shein a step closer to what could be a blockbuster listing for London, following the company’s decision to ditch a planned IPO in New York. The Chinese-founded group could fetch a market valuation of about £50bn.

Shein, which grew in popularity during the coronavirus pandemic when millions of people switched to online shopping, submitted the pre-listing documentation with the Financial Conduct Authority earlier this month, said one of the people.

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JSW Steel announced it will invest $110mn to build steel parts for offshore wind in Texas on Monday at a US commerce department conference for foreign investors.

The investment by India’s largest steelmaker comes at an uncertain moment for US offshore wind amid high interest rates, flagship project cancellations, and an upcoming presidential election where former president Donald Trump has vowed to stop offshore wind projects on “day one” if re-elected in November.

Parth Jindal, managing director of JSW Steel, dismissed concerns of a second Trump administration’s impact on offshore wind.

“Our investment is safeguarded, and we also believe this is the future,” Jindal told the FT. “I frankly am not worried as to who becomes the president.”

European stocks started the week on a positive note, with French equities jumping by more than 1 per cent as uncertainty about the country’s political direction continues to stir market volatility.

The region-wide Stoxx 600 closed 0.7 per cent higher on Monday, having hit its highest intraday level in just over a week during the session. Germany’s Dax gained 0.6 per cent.

France’s Cac 40 rose 1 per cent. That marked the sixth time the French benchmark index has notched a daily move of at least 1 per cent in either direction in the 11 sessions since President Emmanuel Macron called for snap parliamentary elections.

London’s FTSE 100 closed 0.5 per cent higher.

The EU is considering an immediate suspension of financial assistance and military aid to Georgia if the country does not repeal a newly-passed law targeting “foreign agents”, the bloc’s chief diplomat has warned.

Josep Borrell, speaking after a meeting of the EU’s foreign ministers that discussed how the bloc could respond to the Georgian law that has tarnished ties between Tbilisi and Brussels, said options included downgrading diplomatic relations with the country and suspending financial support flows.

These steps did not require unanimous support of 27 states and could be done “immediately”, he told reporters on Monday. 

The cargo ship that crashed into a Baltimore bridge, resulting in the closure of the city’s port and the deaths of six people, has set sail almost three months after the incident.

The US Coast Guard said it would be accompanying the Dali on its journey from Maryland to Virginia, where it will offload more than 1,000 containers and undergo repairs. The vessel is sailing under its own power with a full crew and six salvage experts, the USCG said.

US President Joe Biden promised in March that the federal government would “pay for the entire cost” of reconstructing the Francis Scott Key, when the 300-metre-long ship which is owned by Singapore-based Grace Ocean, collided with it.

The Maryland Port Administration said on Monday that the Port of Baltimore is back to operating at full capacity.

The Moelis investment banker who was filmed apparently punching a person during a New York City Pride event has resigned from the Wall Street bank, the company said.

“Jonathan Kaye has resigned and is no longer with the firm,” Moelis said on Monday.

His departure comes two weeks after Kaye, who ran Moelis’s global business services franchise, was placed on leave after a short clip circulated on social media platform X that appeared to show a person being hit in the face on a street corner.

US stocks were steady in early trade on Monday, while Nvidia shares extended a decline that began late last week.

Wall Street’s benchmark S&P 500 was flat shortly after the opening bell in New York, while the tech-dominated Nasdaq Composite lost less than 0.1 per cent. A measure of the dollar’s strength against a basket of six other major currencies slipped 0.3 per cent.

Chipmaker Nvidia slipped 2.1 per cent, having shed 3.5 per cent and 3.2 per cent on Thursday and Friday last week. 

Data due on Friday is expected to show that the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation slowed further in May.

Intercontinental Exchange, owner of the New York Stock Exchange, has launched a US Treasury clearing business, as regulations changing the structure of the world’s most important bond market lead to competition in clearing. 

ICE said on Monday that US Treasuries would be cleared through its existing clearing house, ICE Clear Credit, the top venue for clearing credit default swaps. It comes ahead of Securities and Exchange Commission rules that will remodel the $27tn US Treasury market from next year by pushing trades through a central clearing house, a move the regulator says will shore up the fragile bond market. 

ICE becomes the first company to formally position itself in the Treasury clearing business. Rivals CME Group and the London Stock Exchange Group’s LCH are also exploring offering Treasury clearing to traders, and competition is expected to be fierce.

Privately held Czechoslovak Group (CSG) has raised its takeover offer for Kinetic, one of the largest US makers of small-arms ammunition, as it hopes to fend off a rival bidder in the controversial takeover battle.

Vista Outdoor, Kinetic’s parent company, said on Monday that CSG had raised its offer by $40mn to $2bn. Vista, whose board had previously recommended the deal, said in a statement that it remained fully committed to CSG.

Vista has also received an offer from Dallas-based investment company MNC Capital Partners.

CSG’s bid has triggered a political backlash in Washington, led by Republican politicians who have demanded that regulators or President Joe Biden block the deal on the grounds that foreign ownership could threaten domestic security.

Big share price moves in Europe today include French laboratory testing group Eurofins Scientific, British soft drinks producer Britvic and London-listed insurance company Prudential.

• Eurofins Scientific: Shares in the Paris-listed drug and consumer product testing group fell 22.7 per cent after US hedge fund Muddy Waters revealed a short position in the company.

  

• Britvic: Shares in the London-listed maker of soft drinks, including Robinsons Fruit Shoot and J2O, rose 8.3 per cent after Carlsberg said it had secured the agreement of PepsiCo, whose products are bottled by Britvic in the UK, for a £3.1bn takeover of the UK drinks maker.

• Prudential: Shares in the UK insurer rose 5.3 per cent after it announced a $2bn share buyback on Sunday to be completed by “no later than mid-2026”.

Start-up Getir, known for its grocery delivery services, has agreed a restructuring under which Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala wealth fund will lead a $250mn funding deal and acquire majority control of its Turkish delivery business.

Mubadala is already an investor in the start-up, which in 2022 was valued at nearly $12bn before rising interest rates and a slowdown in venture capital markets forced it to slash its operations.

As part of the restructuring, a new group will be split off consisting of Getir’s businesses outside Turkish food and grocery delivery including in ecommerce, ride-hailing and the FreshDirect grocery service in New York. Getir’s founders will hold a controlling stake in that unit.

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Abu Dhabi National Oil Company has opened formal talks with Covestro over a deal that would value the German chemicals group’s equity at just under €12bn.

Covestro on Monday said that talks were under way with a “starting point” of €62 per share. That would value the company’s equity at €11.7bn.

Markus Steilemann, chief executive of Covestro, said: “We have made good progress in our discussions with Adnoc. Therefore, we have decided to enter into concrete transaction negotiations.”

Adnoc’s initial approach a year ago centred on a price of €55 per share.

Covestro’s shares rose 6 per cent on Monday in response to the announcement.

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German business confidence has fallen for the first time since January in the latest sign that the nascent rebound in Europe’s largest economy could be losing steam already.

The Ifo Institute said on Monday its business climate index, based on a survey of 9,000 companies, fell 0.7 points to 88.6. Economists had forecast an increase to 89.7.

Ifo president Clemens Fuest said Germany’s economy was “having difficulty overcoming stagnation” and manufacturers were “more sceptical for the months ahead”.

The German economy returned to growth in the first quarter after contracting last year, but a weaker than expected survey of purchasing managers last week by S&P Global indicated it was losing momentum — particularly in the industrial sector.

The European Investment Bank has lifted the immunity of two former employees so that they can be investigated by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office for corruption and abuse of influence.

The EPPO said on Monday that it was also looking into the two individuals for misappropriation of EU funds.

Officials working at EU institutions are granted immunity from investigation by authorities unless that is lifted by the management of the institution. 

The EIB will also allow the prosecutor to search its premises and archives in Luxembourg, the EPPO said.

The EIB, the world’s largest multilateral lender by assets, said it could not comment on ongoing external investigations but that it would “co-operate fully with the European Public Prosecutor’s Office on this matter as required”.

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A company that plans to transform former World War II tunnels in London into a tourist attraction has shunned a domestic listing in favour of Amsterdam.

The London Tunnels PLC said on Monday that it had applied for a listing on Euronext Amsterdam, six months after announcing plans to list on the London Stock Exchange.

The company is the latest to desert the UK stock market, which has been hit in recent years by a combination of companies dropping their London listings and a slowing pipeline of IPOs.

Angus Murray, the company’s chief executive, said: “The London Tunnels can now take advantage of the size and scale of both the equity capital markets and debt capital markets of Europe.”

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European stocks began the week on the back foot, dragged lower by real estate groups and basic materials companies.

The region-wide Stoxx Europe 600 fell 0.1 per cent in early trade on Monday. Germany’s Dax and France’s Cac 40 both rose 0.1 per cent while London’s FTSE 100 lost 0.1 per cent.

Contracts tracking Wall Street’s S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 rose slightly ahead of the New York market open.

UK-based ecommerce group THG has signed a tie-up with Frasers Group, the owner of Sports Direct and a host of other retail brands.

The companies said on Monday that Frasers’ credit and loyalty scheme, Frasers Plus, would be integrated into THG’s Ingenuity ecommerce platform and made available to THG customers.

Frasers will also buy THG’s luxury goods websites, which generate £43mn in annual sales, and sell THG protein products in Sports Direct stores. The companies did not give a value for the deals.

THG said that trading was in line with expectations. The company is due to hold its annual meeting later on Monday.

A sell-off in small-cap Chinese stocks deepened on Monday as regulators remained focused on shoring up the valuations of larger companies.

The country’s CSI 2000 index of small-cap stocks slipped 2.4 per cent, bringing losses for the year to date to more than 23 per cent.

The CSI 300, meanwhile, edged up 0.1 per cent for the day and is up 1.9 per cent for the year so far. In March, UBS estimated that 75 per cent of state-led equity purchases were focused on the index, which is home to the country’s 300 largest listed companies.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index dropped 0.8 per cent as Chinese tech companies listed in the city fell.

Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te has asked the country’s constitutional court to suspend legislation which expands the powers of parliament pending a full constitutional interpretation, deepening a partisan stand-off which threatens to weaken his administration.

Last month, the opposition used its legislative majority to pass amendments allowing lawmakers to demand the revelation of classified information. It also introduced contempt of parliament as a criminal charge and empowered legislators to summon any official, company or individual for questioning.

Lai said the amendments undermined the constitutional separation of powers and put citizens’ privacy rights and companies’ trade secrets at risk.  

Prudential’s Hong Kong-listed shares rose as much as 5.4 per cent in early trading after the UK-based insurer announced a $2bn share buyback programme on Sunday evening.

The buyback would be completed by “no later than mid 2026”, according to a Prudential statement.

The company’s share price has fallen 16.5 per cent this year in spite of strong demand from mainland Chinese customers purchasing insurance policies in Hong Kong.

“Progress towards our financial objectives will increase the potential for further cash returns to shareholders,” chief executive Anil Wadhwani said.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index fell 0.8 per cent on Monday morning while rival insurer AIA was down 0.9 per cent.

A Hong Kong judge has issued a fresh warning to defaulted Chinese developer Kaisa that it could be wound up if the developer fails to make further progress with an offshore debt restructuring plan.

The case was adjourned to August 12 after a lawyer representing Citicorp International, trustee of a key group of bondholders behind the winding up petition, agreed to the company’s request for a further extension.

But Peter Ng, the judge, warned the company would “have no excuse” for a lack of progress in its offshore debt restructuring. Ng said he was “not sure” if another extension would be granted at the next hearing.

Bitcoin dropped 1.6 per cent during early trading in Asia on Monday, extending a sell-off that that has seen the volatile cryptocurrency lose more than 10 per cent of its value since early June.

The price for Bitcoin dropped to $63,157, down from record highs reached in March but still up more than 40 per cent for the year so far.

In equity markets Japan’s benchmark Topix index climbed 0.2 per cent, while South Korea’s Kospi and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 both dropped 0.6 per cent.

Taiwan’s Taiex index shed 1 per cent, with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the largest constituent in the index, falling 1.7 per cent.

Events: Jailed Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai is scheduled to have his case heard in the territory’s Court of Final Appeal. India begins a new session of parliament after national elections in which the ruling Bharatiya Janata party failed to win an outright majority.

Economic data: Australia publishes May trade figures and Singapore releases consumer price index data. Taiwan announces industrial output data and its jobless rate for May.

Corporate updates: Indian corporate giants Tata Motors, Adani Enterprises and Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone hold their annual meetings. Chinese property developer Kaisa Group Holdings is scheduled to appear in court over a winding-up petition from one of its creditors.

Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that the end of the “intense phase” of Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza was “very close”, and that Israel would soon redeploy forces to its northern border where it has been trading near-daily fire with the Lebanese militant group Hizbollah.

In an interview with Israel’s Channel 14, the Israeli prime minister said the end of this phase of fighting in the enclave would not spell the end of the war. He insisted that Israel would continue until it had destroyed Hamas and freed the roughly 120 hostages the militant group still holds.

But he said the switch to lower-intensity conflict there would give Israel “the possibility to shift some of our capabilities” to the north, where cross-border fire between Israeli forces and Iran-backed Hizbollah has escalated sharply in recent weeks.

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Extreme temperatures in the Muslim holy city of Mecca have seen 1,301 people die during this year’s hajj pilgrimage, a senior Saudi official said.

Health minister Fahad al-Jalajel said on Sunday that 83 per cent of the dead were unauthorised pilgrims who had walked long distances under direct sunlight without shelter or rest, including elderly people and some suffering from chronic illnesses.

Saudi authorities have issued multiple warnings against attempting to perform the hajj without authorisation in the weeks leading up to the pilgrimage earlier this month. They also advised pilgrims to take precautions against the expected hot weather at the holy sites.

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Hello and welcome to the working week.

Ding ding. Take your corners for the first debate of the US presidential election on Thursday — although with President Joe Biden and his challenger former president Donald Trump on stage it’ll look like a 2020 rematch. It will probably be the TikTok-able exchanges that grab the most attention among American voters. And as FT columnist Ed Luce writes from Washington, it’s not certain who has most to lose or gain from this mother of all US verbal sparring matches. One truly remarkable fact is that the combined ages of Biden and Trump is two-thirds the age of the country they are duking it out over.

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Defence ministers have been accused of wasting nearly £175mn on external advice on a new communications system for the British army that is already mired in delays and is not due to enter service until the next decade.

The next-generation system, known as Morpheus, had been due to replace the current Bowman radio technology, which was first introduced more than 20 years ago, from 2026. Bowman, however, has had to be upgraded several times due to persistent delays in the procurement of Morpheus.

James Cartlidge, defence procurement minister, said in a letter to John Healey, shadow defence secretary, in March that the Ministry of Defence had spent “c. £174mn on external assistance” for the Morpheus programme from 2015 to the end of December 2023. 

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