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(Bloomberg) — A global equities rally spurred by the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate cut evaporated as disappointing results from Oracle Corp. weighed on tech shares and focus turned to the US central bank’s outlook for further easing next year.

Futures on Nasdaq 100 slumped more than 1.5%, while a selloff in technology stocks in Asia caused the regional equity gauge to reverse earlier gains. S&P 500 futures were down 0.8%. Shares of Oracle, whose fate is deeply tied to the artificial intelligence boom, plunged more than 10% in extended US trading after second-quarter cloud sales fell just short of analysts’ estimates. In a sign of waning risk appetite, Bitcoin lost more than 2%.

The moves came after the S&P 500 rose 0.7% on Wednesday, ending just short of all-time highs, as the Fed cut rates for a third consecutive time and Chair Jerome Powell voiced optimism that the economy will strengthen as the inflationary impact from tariffs fades away. The result marked the first time since 2019 that three officials voted against a policy decision, with dissents on both ends of the policy spectrum. Officials maintained their outlook for a single cut in 2026.

“While most of the focus was on the FOMC, a key risk for markets overnight was Oracle,” said Billy Leung, investment strategist at Global X Management. Its result was a key test for the AI infrastructure trade given Oracle’s role as a bellwether for hyperscale data center spending and has added to broader tech pressure, he said.

Oracle reported a jump in spending on AI data centers and other equipment, rising outlays that are taking longer to translate into cloud revenue than investors wanted. Powered by an AI-driven rally, MSCI Inc.’s index of global stocks has surged about 20% this year and is on course for its best annual advance since 2019.

A gauge of Asian technology stocks was down more than 1%, versus a 0.5% decline in the broader regional benchmark. Shares of SoftBank Group lost more than 8% in Tokyo.

Traders in Asia were also assessing the impact of Mexican lawmakers’ final approval for new tariffs on the region’s imports. Also in focus was Thursday’s interest-rate decision in the Philippines, where the central bank is predicted to cut its key interest rate for a fifth straight meeting.

In Japan, bonds gained after an auction of 20-year government debt drew its strongest demand since 2020. Yields across the curve have recently climbed to multi-year highs on renewed fiscal concerns as well as rising expectations for a Bank of Japan rate hike at its meeting next week.

Elsewhere in markets, a gauge of the dollar edged higher after falling 0.4% on Wednesday. In commodities, oil prices were in focus after the US seized a sanctioned tanker off Venezuela, deterring more shipments from the South American producer and raising the risk of a conflict.

‘Fairly Choppy’

US Treasuries rallied on Wednesday, with the policy-sensitive two-year yield sliding eight basis points, as the Fed’s quarter-point rate reduction was accompanied by the authorization of fresh Treasury bill purchases to rebuild bank reserves. The yield fell one more basis point on Thursday.

The 10-year yield, which dropped around four basis points in the previous session, was two basis points lower on Thursday. The declines have stalled a prior run up in yields that had driven one global gauge to its highest since 2009.

Powell pushed through the quarter percentage point cut not only over the objection of a few voters. A much larger group of regional Fed bank presidents who participated in the debate but weren’t among this year’s voting roster also signaled they opposed the cut.

The fractures could foreshadow what’s to come in 2026, when a new chair may struggle even more than Powell to marshal consensus at the Fed.

The Fed chair suggested the central bank had now acted sufficiently to help stabilize the labor market while leaving rates high enough to continue weighing on price pressures. He also underscored the importance of upcoming economic reports while advising caution on assessing household jobs readouts, given technical distortions after a government shutdown caused a data blackout.

Nick Twidale, chief analyst at AT Global Markets in Sydney, said he is “hesitant” on how much momentum the Fed’s cut will bring to global markets.

“The forward guidance was probably less dovish than most investors were hoping for,” he said. “We may see some fairly choppy markets in the sessions ahead as the market digests what Jerome Powell had to say.”

Corporate News

Private equity firm TPG Inc. is considering options for APM Monaco, including a possible stake sale or an initial public offering of the jeweler, according to people familiar with the matter. SK Hynix Inc. fell after South Korea’s main bourse issued a higher-level warning on investing in the stock following strong gains sparked by expectations of a listing in New York. Investment banks are on track to take home their smallest slice of underwriting fees from Hong Kong listings in years, even as share sales in the city have staged a blistering rebound. President Donald Trump signaled he’ll oppose a Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. deal that doesn’t include new ownership of CNN, a potential wrinkle for the bid from Netflix Inc. Shares of Jingdong Industrials Inc., the supply-chain unit of Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com Inc., fell in their Hong Kong trading debut after a HK$2.98 billion ($383 million) initial public offering. Japan’s stock market is witnessing a record wave of large private transactions known as block trades, stemming from companies reducing cross-shareholdings to improve corporate governance. Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek has relied on Nvidia Corp. chips that are banned in the country to develop an upcoming AI model, according to a new report in The Information. Coca-Cola Co. said Chief Executive Officer James Quincey is stepping down and will be replaced at the end of March by Henrique Braun, the company’s chief operating officer. Some of the main moves in markets:

Stocks

S&P 500 futures fell 0.8% as of 2:16 p.m. Tokyo time Japan’s Topix fell 0.7% Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.1% Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was little changed The Shanghai Composite fell 0.6% Euro Stoxx 50 futures fell 0.1% Currencies

The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index rose 0.1% The euro was little changed at $1.1690 The Japanese yen was little changed at 155.91 per dollar The offshore yuan was little changed at 7.0611 per dollar The Australian dollar fell 0.6% to $0.6637 Cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin fell 2.4% to $90,140.14 Ether fell 4.3% to $3,197.85 Bonds

The yield on 10-year Treasuries declined two basis points to 4.12% Japan’s 10-year yield declined three basis points to 1.925% Australia’s 10-year yield declined nine basis points to 4.72% Commodities

West Texas Intermediate crude was little changed Spot gold fell 0.4% to $4,212.65 an ounce This story was produced with the assistance of Bloomberg Automation.

–With assistance from Richard Henderson.

©2025 Bloomberg L.P.

In this new policy brief, UNEP FI and the European Banking Federation (EBF) share seven potential policy levers to help strengthen the investment case for the EU chemical sector and help it attract finance for its sustainable transition.

The brief discusses the sector’s market and decarbonization challenges and how new policy packages anchored in the European Green Deal—including the 2025 EU Chemicals Industry Package and the 2025 Clean Industrial Deal (CID), supported by the Industrial Decarbonization Bank—present opportunities by aiming to create the policy certainty and financing tools needed for large-scale sectoral transformation.

This is the first in a new EU sectoral policy brief series developed by UNEP FI and EBF, intended to strengthen the connection between financial institutions, policymakers, and the real economy.

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Simply sign up to the UK banks myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.

Starling Bank is exploring plans to buy another UK lender, an overhaul to its business model that would allow the digital bank to put its £12bn worth of customer deposits to more profitable use. 

The fintech is actively looking at several acquisition options that would allow it to expand its lending capacity and deploy deposits into areas that could generate higher returns, such as corporate lending, according to two people familiar with the discussions. One said the acquisition could be “substantial” in scale.  

The acquisition is part of an effort by the fintech to diversify its income. Currently, Starling customer deposits are either held at the Bank of England collecting interest, invested in securities such as bonds, or channelled into mortgage lending through Fleet, a small lender that Starling bought in 2021.

John Cronin, an independent bank analyst, said Starling “has struggled to grow its loan book commensurate with the size of its deposit book”. He said Starling’s latest set of accounts showed that £4.7bn worth of its £12.1bn deposits were net loans, which was lower than peers.

Starling has thought about growing its capacity organically but has decided that an acquisition would be faster, according to the people familiar with the situation.

Starling declined to comment. 

The neobank, which was founded in 2014 by former Allied Irish Banks executive Anne Boden, has been tied to an acquisition before. In April, Sky News reported that Shawbrook, the SME lender, had approached Starling about a potential combination, but no deal emerged. 

One person familiar with the business said Starling was not eyeing up mergers but acquisitions of a mixture of cash or cash and shares.

Starling was previously criticised by the government’s former anti-fraud minister, Lord Theodore Agnew, for expanding its lending during Covid-19. The neobank built out a large portfolio of loans from the government-backed “bounce back loans”, which were issued by banks to support struggling businesses quickly during the pandemic.

This grew to become a significant chunk of Starling’s lending book, but it announced in May that it was setting aside £28mn to cover loans that may not have complied with the lending scheme’s requirements. The UK financial regulator fined Starling in 2024 for “shockingly lax controls” against financial crime during its expansion from 2017 to 2023. The bank said it had since invested heavily in strengthening its controls.

Starling has also built software called Engine, which allows lenders to design and build their own digital capabilities. The software, which Starling believes will be key to growth, is already being used by a bank in Australia and another in Romania. Last month, Starling announced that it had signed Canada’s Tangerine Bank as its latest Engine customer. 

Starling is also weighing up buying a bank in the US to accelerate its global expansion, the Financial Times has previously reported. The plans could also include a US initial public offering. Part of the ambition is to plug Engine into an American bank and attract more local customers.

Raman Bhatia, the group’s chief executive officer, told the FT’s Global Banking Summit last week that Starling was also open to buying a European business in the next three to five years to further boost expansion.

Starling acquired in August the accounting software start-up Ember, which it hopes to provide to its small-business customers. “We have focused on high-quality acquisitions but now we want to turbocharge that engine in the UK so there is so much to do here in terms of market share and growth expansion,” said Bhatia at the FT’s banking summit.

MIT researchers have developed a new fabrication method that could enable the production of more energy efficient electronics by stacking multiple functional components on top of one existing circuit.

In traditional circuits, logic devices that perform computation, like transistors, and memory devices that store data are built as separate components, forcing data to travel back and forth between them, which wastes energy.

This new electronics integration platform allows scientists to fabricate transistors and memory devices in one compact stack on a semiconductor chip. This eliminates much of that wasted energy while boosting the speed of computation.

Key to this advance is a newly developed material with unique properties and a more precise fabrication approach that reduces the number of defects in the material. This allows the researchers to make extremely tiny transistors with built-in memory that can perform faster than state-of-the-art devices while consuming less electricity than similar transistors.

By improving the energy efficiency of electronic devices, this new approach could help reduce the burgeoning electricity consumption of computation, especially for demanding applications like generative AI, deep learning, and computer vision tasks.

“We have to minimize the amount of energy we use for AI and other data-centric computation in the future because it is simply not sustainable. We will need new technology like this integration platform to continue that progress,” says Yanjie Shao, an MIT postdoc and lead author of two papers on these new transistors.

The new technique is described in two papers (one invited) that were presented at the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting. Shao is joined on the papers by senior authors Jesús del Alamo, the Donner Professor of Engineering in the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS); Dimitri Antoniadis, the Ray and Maria Stata Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT; as well as others at MIT, the University of Waterloo, and Samsung Electronics.

Flipping the problem

Standard CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) chips traditionally have a front end, where the active components like transistors and capacitors are fabricated, and a back end that includes wires called interconnects and other metal bonds that connect components of the chip.

But some energy is lost when data travel between these bonds, and slight misalignments can hamper performance. Stacking active components would reduce the distance data must travel and improve a chip’s energy efficiency.

Typically, it is difficult to stack silicon transistors on a CMOS chip because the high temperature required to fabricate additional devices on the front end would destroy the existing transistors underneath.

The MIT researchers turned this problem on its head, developing an integration technique to stack active components on the back end of the chip instead.

“If we can use this back-end platform to put in additional active layers of transistors, not just interconnects, that would make the integration density of the chip much higher and improve its energy efficiency,” Shao explains.

The researchers accomplished this using a new material, amorphous indium oxide, as the active channel layer of their back-end transistor. The active channel layer is where the transistor’s essential functions take place.

Due to the unique properties of indium oxide, they can “grow” an extremely thin layer of this material at a temperature of only about 150 degrees Celsius on the back end of an existing circuit without damaging the device on the front end.

Perfecting the process

They carefully optimized the fabrication process, which minimizes the number of defects in a layer of indium oxide material that is only about 2 nanometers thick.

A few defects, known as oxygen vacancies, are necessary for the transistor to switch on, but with too many defects it won’t work properly. This optimized fabrication process allows the researchers to produce an extremely tiny transistor that operates rapidly and cleanly, eliminating much of the additional energy required to switch a transistor between off and on.

Building on this approach, they also fabricated back-end transistors with integrated memory that are only about 20 nanometers in size. To do this, they added a layer of material called ferroelectric hafnium-zirconium-oxide as the memory component.

These compact memory transistors demonstrated switching speeds of only 10 nanoseconds, hitting the limit of the team’s measurement instruments. This switching also requires much lower voltage than similar devices, reducing electricity consumption.

And because the memory transistors are so tiny, the researchers can use them as a platform to study the fundamental physics of individual units of ferroelectric hafnium-zirconium-oxide.

“If we can better understand the physics, we can use this material for many new applications. The energy it uses is very minimal, and it gives us a lot of flexibility in how we can design devices. It really could open up many new avenues for the future,” Shao says.

The researchers also worked with a team at the University of Waterloo to develop a model of the performance of the back-end transistors, which is an important step before the devices can be integrated into larger circuits and electronic systems.

In the future, they want to build upon these demonstrations by integrating back-end memory transistors onto a single circuit. They also want to enhance the performance of the transistors and study how to more finely control the properties of ferroelectric hafnium-zirconium-oxide.

“Now, we can build a platform of versatile electronics on the back end of a chip that enable us to achieve high energy efficiency and many different functionalities in very small devices. We have a good device architecture and material to work with, but we need to keep innovating to uncover the ultimate performance limits,” Shao says.

This work is supported, in part, by Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) and Intel. Fabrication was carried out at the MIT Microsystems Technology Laboratories and MIT.nano facilities.