MORNING NEWS

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.

Italy’s competition watchdog fined Apple more than 98 million euros ($114.8 million), saying the company abused its dominance in the digital economy through its app-tracking transparency policy. The AGCM said Monday that Apple imposes unfair privacy rules on app developers by requiring them to gain users’ consent to collect and use data for advertising through a specific prompt. The watchdog said the prompt essentially forces app developers to ask for consent twice for the same purpose. It said Apple’s app-tracking transparency terms harm the interests of Apple’s commercial partners.

Nine pharmaceutical companies agreed to lower the prices that certain federal government programs and patients pay, in a new round of industry pacts with the Trump administration. The companies said they would reduce U.S. prices on drugs to levels comparable with prices charged in other wealthy countries, which are generally much lower. In return, the companies get administration-backed reprieves from potential new U.S. tariffs for three years.

Medical-supplies distributor Medline has raised $6.26 billion in an initial public offering, taking the title of biggest IPO of the year and a valuation of more than $50 billion. The U.S.-based company backed by private-equity giants Blackstone and Carlyle sold 216 million shares at $29.00 each in an upsized offering, it said.

Pfizer issued its 2026 guidance, expecting its adjusted earnings per share to come in below this year’s figures, and revised its 2025 revenue outlook. The company reiterated its 2025 adjusted earnings guidance of $3 to $3.15 a share. It guided for 2025 revenue of $62 billion, compared with its previous forecast of $61 billion to $64 billion.

Ford Motor said it expected to take about $19.5 billion in charges, mainly tied to its electric-vehicle business, a massive hit as the automaker retrenches in the face of sinking EV demand. The sum is among the largest impairments taken by a company and marks the U.S. auto industry’s biggest reckoning to date that it can’t realize its electric-vehicle ambitions anytime soon.