MORNING NEWS

Mitsubishi Corp. has agreed to acquire Aethon's shale gas assets in Texas and Louisiana for $5.2 billion, its biggest acquisition ever. The Japanese trading house said Friday that Aethon's natural gas is currently sold in the southern U.S. market and that the company is considering exporting part of the production as liquefied natural gas to Asia, including Japan, and Europe.

Richemont has reported that sales in its jewelry division continued to drive revenue growth at the end of the year, which is encouraging news for the luxury sector, which hopes to gain momentum in the coming year. The Swiss group, which, in addition to its star jewelers Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels, owns high-end watchmakers such as Vacheron Constantin and fashion brands such as Chloe, recorded sales growth of 11% at constant exchange rates to reach €6.4 billion ($7.45 billion) in the third quarter of its fiscal year, which ended in December. This figure is slightly higher than analysts' expectations, who had forecast sales of €6.28 billion for the quarter, according to a consensus established by FactSet prior to publication, and marks a slight acceleration in the pace of growth compared to the first half of the year.

Nvidia must meet new security requirements before sending its H200 artificial-intelligence chips to China, the Trump administration said. Under the rules, Nvidia must make sure there is sufficient supply of AI chips in the U.S., and its customers have to demonstrate adequate security procedures before semiconductors are shipped, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security said in a rule published Tuesday.

Construction chemicals and adhesives manufacturer Sika suffered a decline in sales in the 2025 financial year. Negative currency effects and the weak Chinese construction market slowed growth. In 2025, sales dropped by 4.8 percent to 11.20 billion Swiss francs, the company announced on Tuesday. The strong Swiss franc was the main factor contributing to this: Sika estimates the negative currency effect at 5.4 percent. Analysts had expected slightly higher sales of CHF 11.29 billion on average. Acquisitions contributed a further 1.0 percent to growth, Sika added. Organically, the company thus shrank by 0.4 percent last year. Sika has been unable to expand on its own since the third quarter of 2025.

European stock futures fell, as U.S. futures declined after Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the Department of Justice had subpoenaed the Federal Reserve on Friday and threatened a criminal indictment against him over cost overruns at the agency's headquarters. In a statement late Sunday, Powell said the accusations that he misled Congress over the cost of the renovations were a pretext for President Donald Trump to pressure the Fed to cut interest rates, and that the investigation threatens the Fed's independence. Earnings season is also set to start this week, with quarterly reports expected from big U.S. banks such as Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley.

Rio Tinto and Glencore are in talks about a deal that would create the world’s largest mining company with a market value of more than $200 billion, as a scramble for copper and other metals drives an industry return to big acquisitions. Glencore and Rio Tinto separately confirmed that talks are under way over an all-share deal, revisiting a tie-up that was first discussed around a year ago when the U.S. and other countries began reshaping supply chains for metals and minerals essential to industries such as defense, automaking and semiconductor chips.

Siemens has announced an expansion of its partnership with Nvidia. The goal of the intensified collaboration is to make artificial intelligence (AI) the operating system of industry, as the German technology company announced at CES 2026 in Las Vegas. New offers are intended to bring industrial and physical AI to all industries and industrial workflows.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang unveiled the company’s newest AI server systems, known as Vera Rubin, which go on sale in the second half of this year. Usually, Nvidia details the specs and capabilities of its latest chips at its spring developer conference in Silicon Valley. This year, Huang said, the complexity of computing required by AI and the immense demand for advanced processors to train and operate models has prompted the semiconductor industry to move faster.

SoftBank Group agreed to buy DigitalBridge Group for $4 billion, including debt, part of the Japanese conglomerate’s strategy to take advantage of an AI-driven boom in digital infrastructure. Under the terms of the deal, SoftBank will purchase all of DigitalBridge’s outstanding shares for $16 apiece. The price represents a 15% premium to DigitalBridge’s closing share price Friday, and a 50% premium to its unaffected 52-week average closing price as of Dec. 4, the companies said. Shares of DigitalBridge jumped 9.8%, to $15.28, in premarket trading Monday.

BP said it is selling a 65% stake in its Castrol lubricants business for $8 billion, as part of a plan to simplify the business following a review that started under former Chief Executive Officer Murray Auchincloss. The oil major said that it was selling the shareholding to investment firm Stonepeak and that the two companies would form a joint venture in which it will own 35%. BP has an option to sell its stake in the joint venture after a two-year lockup period. BP said the deal has an enterprise value of $10.1 billion, which includes $1.8 billion in joint-venture minority interests and $0.3 billion of debt.