Nvidia’s board is preparing to oust CEO Jensen Huang after he had two extramarital affairs, including one with a suspected Chinese spy and another with an employee. The board is planning to meet as soon as possible to determine his future, people familiar with the matter said. His departure would bring down the curtain in an era during which he stoked the global artificial-intelligence boom and became a geopolitical star. It would leave one of the world’s most valuable companies in need of a new leader. Huang, a co-founder of Nvidia, is seen by many as the face of the AI arms race. The Nvidia CEO also had an affair with Kimberly Powell, a senior executive at Nvidia who runs the company’s healthcare business, according to a person familiar with the matter. The New York Times earlier reported the second affair. Shares of Nvidia were down about 8%.

The Swiss stock market closed on a positive note mid-week. However, due to its defensive nature, the benchmark SMI index underperformed other stock markets. Tech shares, in particular, were once again in demand. The SMI closed 0.11 per cent higher on Wednesday at 15,053.86 points. The benchmark index thus remained well above the psychologically important 15,000-point mark. The mid-cap index, SMIM, gained 0.67 per cent to 3,259.11 points, whilst the broad-based SPI rose 0.24 per cent to 21,194.70 points. Other European indices, such as the German DAX and the French CAC 40, posted even stronger gains. US stock markets were also trading higher in the evening, with the tech heavy Nasdaq rising by more than 2 per cent. Among the top gainers, Logitech (+4.0 per cent) continued its recovery. Kepler Cheuvreux expressed support for the recently underperforming shares and appeared confident about the Christmas trading season. Galderma (+3.4 per cent) and Sandoz (+2.2 per cent) also saw above-average demand.

Europe
The major European markets extended recent gains on Wednesday with an eye towards hitting fresh record closing highs. The markets were in the green all day, opening higher and then fading a bit before rallying to finish at daily highs. The FTSE in London advanced 83.88 points or 0.78 percent to finish at 10,835.47, while the DAX in Germany rallied 315.32 points or 1.20 percent to close at 26,662.77 and the CAC 40 in France added 54.28 points or 0.66 percent. The markets started tracking higher again after Wall Street opened, and they tracked the sharp rebound by the tech shares on the NASDAQ. In economic news, Germany's consumer price inflation eased to a three-month low in October, as estimated, driven by the moderation in energy price growth. The consumer price index rose 2.8 percent year-on-year, following a 3.3 percent increase in September. The rate was the lowest since July and came in line with the estimate published on October 30. Italy's industrial production expanded more-than-expected in September - up 1.2 percent on a monthly basis in September, in contrast to the 1.2 percent decrease in August. Output was forecast to increase by 0.7 percent. Consumer spending in Sweden increased for the second straight month in October. Household consumption rose 1.2 percent month-on-month in October, following a 0.5 percent rebound in September. In corporate news, Swiss Life Holding AG (SLW1.F, SZLMY, SLHN.SW) reported Wednesday higher fee income and Gross written premiums in the first nine months of 2026. In the nine-month period, the Swiss life insurance company's fee income totaled 2.04 billion Swiss francs, higher than prior year's 1.91 billion francs. The 8 percent growth in local currency was driven by owned IFAs, own and third-party products and services, as well as Swiss Life Asset Managers.

United States
U.S. stocks rose after CoreWeave's earnings update quelled worries that artificial-intelligence profits would not come soon enough to cover infrastructure debt burdens. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 254.60 points, or 0.49%, to 52486.49. The broad S&P 500 gained 98.45 points, or 1.31%, to 7619.38 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite added 400.31 points, or 1.60%, to 25466.19. The Nasdaq is now down 7.7% from its record high. CoreWeave shares climbed 25% to $60.77 for their biggest one-day gain since June 2025, following the release of third-quarter earnings late Tuesday. Investors had questioned the viability of the company's business model, buying premium chips from Nvidia for data centers and renting them to AI companies. Anthropic's initial public offering is oversubscribed due to institutional investor demand, Bloomberg reported. That eased fears about a reported reduction of the Claude AI bot maker's targeted valuation. OpenAI posted sequential third-quarter revenue growth of roughly 50% to $10 billion, but the maker of the ChatGPT AI model continued to post heavy operating losses. Nvidia shares rose 2.9% to $173.73 on the day, but are still down 23% for the last month, as investors await updates on Chief Executive Jensen Huang's future with the chip maker following the recent spy scandal.

Asia
Asian stock markets were mostly down in late trading on Thursday. Local stock markets had already celebrated the AI optimism on Wall Street sparked by the surprisingly upbeat outlook from data centre operator CoreWeave the previous day. Instead, investors are focusing on the fate of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang with regard to the technology sector.

Bonds
The US Treasury market was closed in observance of Veterans Day.

Analysis
UBS lowers its Prudential target to 1,495 (1,510) GBp – Buy
UBS lowers its Infineon target to 55 (64) EUR – Neutral
Citi raises its Air France-KLM target to 14.60 (12.20) EUR – Neutral

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