The IAEA has launched a new research project to enhance computer security for artificial intelligence systems that may be used in the nuclear sector. The project aims to strengthen computer security strategies to support the adoption of artificial intelligence-enabled technologies by nuclear facilities, including those for small modular reactors and other nuclear applications.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) systems are being deployed across the nuclear industry, offering potential benefits such as improved operational efficiency and enhanced security measures, including for threat detection. However, these technologies also create new computer security concerns that require innovative solutions. Risks include manipulation of data or information being used to teach or run an AI system. Minimizing such risks will involve robust information security and ensuring it is being used correctly.
Yuan Yuan, President of Huawei Scale-Out Storage Domain. Credit: Huawei
As the world’s appetite for data continues to grow, data centres now do far more than simply store information; from managed storage and backup to infrastructure outsourcing, and AI training. According to GlobalData forecasts, the global enterprise data centre and hosting market was worth US$112.4 billion in 2024 and is forecast to grow to $188.2 billion by 2029, a CAGR of 10.9%[i].Despite this growth, most data centres still struggle with limited space and power, and often face performance bottlenecks, particularly when handling demanding AI workloads.
How can we address CPU performance bottlenecks?
Yuan Yuan is President of Huawei Scale-Out Storage Domain and recently spoke at a restricted round table discussion hosted at Huawei CONNECT 2025 in Shanghai. A leading voice in the industry, Yuan discussed how advances in storage technology are shaping the future of data management and offered valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities facing data centres today.
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“CPU card utilisation rate is currently only around 50%,” says Yuan. “This means half of the time it is not visited (used). CPU cards are very expensive… but the CPU card is sitting there waiting for the data. That’s a storage issue.” Managing different types of data can add even more complexity, Yuan added. “The performance of traditional HDDs can no longer meet the demands of AI, big data, and high-concurrency applications for low latency and high IOPS [Input/Output Operations Per Second].”
This is where all-flash data storage comes in: it’s fast, efficient and compact in size. “Huawei uses all-flash storage solutions to break through bottlenecks and enhance business efficiency,” explained Yuan. “The release of the Huawei OceanStor Pacific 9928/9926 [all-flash scale-out storage] targets high-performance, large-capacity scenarios, enabling intelligent tiering. This addresses the key issues of traditional HDDs occupying cabinet space, utilising high power consumption, and yet providing low performance.”
Huawei also recently launched the OceanDisk 1800 intelligent disk enclosure, transitioning from JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks) to diskless enclosures, decoupling storage and computing resources, achieving flexible expansion and efficient management of storage resources. “Moving forward, we will continue to develop GPU+NPU native disk enclosures,” says Yuan.
The advantages of using all-flash data storage over hard disk drives (HDD)
Flash storage (solid state drive – SSD) offers several important advantages over traditional hard disk drives. In short, flash storage is much faster, uses less power, and takes up less room than hard drives and the performance difference between HDDs and SSDs is significant. As Yuan explains: “The throughput can reach to 15 gigabytes per second (for SSDs) compared to just 100 megabytes per second for HDDs – making SSDs roughly 15 times faster.” This means SSDs can handle larger amounts of data much more quickly than traditional hard drives. Flash storage is also more efficient: “Power consumption, space and weight are roughly 10 times less.”
The sticking point right now, says Yuan, is the price: “It’s currently about three times more expensive than hard drives but things are changing quickly. AI needs huge amounts of data, and we now have better ways to manage and use that data. As AI becomes more common, customers need more storage and better performance. For example, with hard drives you might store 10 petabytes, but with flash storage you could store 100 petabytes for AI. That’s why we’re working on new features like power saving and data compression to help lower costs and make it easier for customers to switch to flash storage.”
Traditionally, flash storage was not as robust as HDDs, but that is changing, says Yuan. “Five years ago, I might have agreed that SSDs didn’t last as long, since all semiconductor equipment – like CPUs, memory, and SSDs – can fail. But now, thanks to new technology in SSD controllers and memory, they’re much more reliable and can last five to 10 years without any issues. In fact, SSDs now have a similar lifespan to hard drives, which are rated to last about two million hours.”
Powering AI with Huawei’s AI Data Lake Solution
Huawei’s all-flash strategy could contribute significantly to the development of AI. Huawei’s AI Data Lake Solution is designed to accelerate AI adoption across industries. The solution delivers a high-quality AI corpus and speeds up model training and inference. Able to store massive amounts of unstructured data, AI Data Lake is enabling centralised and unified data management, as well as breaking down data silos and empowering data-driven business innovation.
Yuan emphasises that AI is driving an exponential increase in data demand: “AI consumes data heavily and to make AI models smarter, they need more data.” Huawei has been investing heavily in new features and architectures to meet these needs, and Yuan notes that technical innovations, such as unified cache and vector databases, are essential for supporting AI’s performance and efficiency:
“For AI inference, we’ve added two key features. First, we use a unified cache manager (UCM) to store important data, so the system doesn’t have to recalculate information every time; instead, it can quickly access what it needs. Secondly, because not all information is available from outside sources, we help customers build local databases to keep their data up-to-date and improve the performance of their AI models.”
Is all-flash data storage better for the environment?
Data centres are highly energy intensive and take up a lot of space. Indeed, the International Energy Agency (IEA)[ii] estimates that globally, data centres accounted for approximately 1.5% of the world’s electricity consumption in 2024 (415 TWh) and is expected to more than double to around 945 TWh by 2030, representing nearly 3% of total global electricity consumption.
However, Huawei’s OceanStor Pacific all-flash scale-out storage has been certified by ENERGY STAR® for energy efficiency[iii].
“We were one of the first companies in Asia to have our storage equipment certified for energy efficiency with the ENERGY STAR label,” says Yuan. “This means our products meet strict standards for saving energy. For example, our all-flash storage uses just 0.25 watts per terabyte, which is the lowest in the industry and much lower than the usual 0.5 to 1 watt per terabyte for standard storage. We also design our systems with features to save even more power, like automatically lowering CPU speed when the workload is light.”
This not only helps customers reduce their power consumption and operating costs, but having ENERGY STAR certification gives customers confidence that they are choosing products that are both high quality and energy efficient, says Yuan.
Next steps for data storage
When it comes to the future, Yuan was cautious about divulging Huawei’s next steps, but he did confirm that AI wasn’t going to plateau any time soon: “Data demand isn’t slowing down – it’s actually growing faster than ever. AI uses huge amounts of data and as AI models get smarter and new technologies appear, the need for data keeps increasing. This is happening in many areas, from science and robotics to new types of AI.”
Yuan concludes: “Our approach means our customers can double their storage capacity every two years without needing more power or extra space. This lets them keep up with growing data needs without major changes to their infrastructure.
“Data is the future. AI needs data, and storage is the foundation that will drive new productivity.”
[i] GlobalData: Strategic Intelligence Technology: Data Centers, September 2025 [ii] https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-and-ai/energy-demand-from-ai [iii] https://www.energystar.gov/productfinder/product/certified-data-center-storage/details/3999750
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Squire Patton Boggs is pleased to announce that Francesca Crisera Ruiz has rejoined the firm as a partner in its global Corporate Practice Group, based in San Francisco. She returns from Gunderson Dettmer, where she served as a partner in the firm’s Mergers & Acquisitions Practice Group.
“We are thrilled to have Francesca rejoin Squire Patton Boggs, as her depth of expertise in technology-related M&A and commercial work complements a key area of growth within our global practice,” said Cipriano S. Beredo, Americas Chair of the Corporate Practice. “Francesca not only brings a strong track record of client service, but her experience both as an M&A lead and intellectual property specialist uniquely positions her to support technology-driven deal flow, especially in the Americas.”
Ms. Crisera Ruiz, who spent nearly two decades at Squire Patton Boggs earlier in her career, has extensive experience advising technology and other companies on M&A and corporate matters, both domestic and international. She is particularly focused on complex cross-border deals, joint ventures and other transactions such as late-stage venture exits and private equity acquisitions involving technology assets. She has frequently served a dual role as lead deal counsel and subject matter expert on IP and commercial issues, such as contracts, license agreements, and trademarks. Ms. Crisera Ruiz also provides general corporate advisory work, having served as outside general counsel to a number of growth-stage companies.
Mark C. Dosker, Managing Partner of the San Francisco office added, “San Francisco is an important market for our firm and our technology clients, and Francesca’s legal skill set deepens our transactional capabilities in the region. Her return further strengthens our corporate team and enhances the support we provide to clients in California and across the nation. We are delighted to welcome her back to the firm.”
Commenting on her return, Ms. Crisera Ruiz said, “Having spent a significant portion of my career at Squire Patton Boggs, I am honored to rejoin the firm and its talented team across the globe. I have worked with tech-focused companies throughout my career, and through the firm’s extensive global platform, I look forward to further serving clients on their strategic transactions.”
Ms. Crisera Ruiz earned her JD from the University of California, Hastings College of Law and her BA from the University of California, Los Angeles.
What is Amazon Web Services?published at 09:43 BST
09:43 BST
Liv McMahon Technology reporter
Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the tech giant’s cloud computing
division, and its infrastructure underpins millions of large companies’
websites and platforms.
Many of the apps on your smartphone are actually running on AWS
data centres.
In an update on its service status page where it highlights any
problems, it said it could confirm “significant error rates for
requests” to one of its endpoints for services in its US-EAST-1 region.
As the world’s largest IKEA retailer, Ingka Group operates in 31 markets and represents 87% of global IKEA sales. Unlike typical corporations, the Group is owned by a foundation with a charitable purpose. This means that profits are reinvested into the business rather than distributed to private shareholders, enabling self-funded, long-term investments like this major forestland acquisition in the Baltics.
This long-term investment approach also enables a different acquisition strategy. Rather than a focus on mainly exporting timber and short-term returns, Ingka Investments aims to partner with Baltic sawmills and panel manufacturers to process wood regionally, creating skilled jobs and building local expertise.
Niks Sauva, Country Manager, Ingka Investments Latvia, continued: “We’re committed to creating more value locally in the Baltics. Our goal is to increase the share of wood processed regionally to strengthen the Baltic forestry value chain.”
Already today, Ingka Investments owns 331,000 hectares in seven countries. In financial year 2025, the Ingka Investments forestland teams employed around 190 co-workers, and created thousands of additional jobs through local contractors. The company planted 14 million seedlings, that together with natural regeneration contributed to overall forest expansion and an estimated net growth of 500,000 cubic metres annually. 22 percent of Ingka Investments’ existing forests are managed with a special focus on conservation and prioritising environmental objectives first.
Earlier this year, Ingka Investments allocated 16,000 hectares of its Latvian forests for an applied research collaboration with the European Forest Institute and Preferred by Nature. The project trials practices such as closer‑to‑nature and continuous‑cover forestry to improve resilience and minimise biodiversity impacts, with the intention of scaling proven methods across Ingka Investments’ forests and wider supply chains.
Van der Poel ended: “We firmly believe that responsible forest management delivers both environmental and economic success. It’s in our interest to manage our forests for the long-term, preserving and improving their health, while providing this renewable resource for furniture and other uses. Our goal is to ensure that this vital resource remains forests forever.”
Lotta Lyrå, President and CEO of Södra, said: “For Södra, this is a transaction that enables us to focus more on developing the value of our members’ forests and thereby strengthen our long-term competitiveness. We are very pleased to have found a buyer who shares our view of responsible and sustainable forestry, and we look forward to seeing the forests in the Baltics managed in the same spirit.”
Completion is subject to approval by the relevant authorities in Latvia and Estonia.
Note to editors
Ingka Investments currently owns around 331,500 hectares (ha) of land where it is managing existing forests and growing new forests: 110,000 ha in Latvia, 31,000 ha in Estonia, 27,000 ha in Lithuania, 75,000 ha in the US, 51,000 ha in Romania, 28,500 ha in Aotearoa New Zealand, and 9,000 ha in Finland.
In financial year 2025, Ingka Investments Latvia generated a turnover of EUR 11.9 million, employed 40 local co-workers, and created additional jobs through local contractors. Ingka Investments Estonia generated a turnover of EUR 8.5 million and employed 12 local co-workers.
Total area included in the acquisition:
Latvia Total area: 135,324 ha
Forestland area: 119,929 ha (89% of the total area)
Estonia
Total area: 17,742 ha
Forestland area: 15,773 ha (89% of the total area)
The purchase price of the asset was EUR 720 million.
Ingka Group has IKEA retail operations in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom, and United States. Ingka Group doesn’t have any retail operations in the Baltics. The IKEA retail operations in the Baltics are operated by Inter IKEA Group.
Read more about Ingka Group’ssustainability performance and commitments in the latest Annual & Sustainability Summary report:Ingka Group Annual Summary and Sustainability Report FY24
For more information on the IKEA Forest Agenda, please visit: Wood and forestry – IKEA Global
About Ingka Investments
Ingka Investments is the investment arm of Ingka Group, the largest IKEA retailer. They invest in assets, manage companies, and operate strategic businesses to preserve and create value for Ingka Group and IKEA – now, and for generations to come. Taking a long-term approach, they invest across six strategic areas: forestland, renewable energy, real estate, circular, financial markets, and business acquisitions and venture investments. Ingka investments responsibly manages over 331,500 hectares of forestland in seven countries, focusing on long-term ownership that helps preserve and increase the forest quality for future generations. Find further information on Ingka Investments here.
About Ingka Group
With IKEA retail operations in 31 markets, Ingka Group is the largest IKEA retailer and represents 87% of IKEA retail sales. It is a strategic partner to develop and innovate the IKEA business and help define common IKEA strategies. Ingka Group owns and operates IKEA sales channels under franchise agreements with Inter IKEA Systems B.V. It has three business areas: IKEA Retail, Ingka Investments and Ingka Centres. Read more on Ingka.com.
Wild Bioscience (Wild Bio) the Irish co-founded Oxford spinout that aims to improve crop varieties sustainably has raised $60m in an EIT-led round.
Co-founded by Irish man Prof Steve Kelly, the Wild Bio $60m Series A round was led by the Ellison Institute of Technology (EIT), to help advance the spin-out’s mission to develop improved crop varieties using AI and precision breeding. Other participants included existing investors Oxford Science Enterprises (OSE), Braavos Capital, and the University of Oxford.
Wild Bio specialises in crop genetics, using a data-driven approach to “improve crop productivity, climate resilience, and agricultural sustainability”.
“The Wild Bio platform deciphers hundreds of millions of years of plant evolution to identify promising genetic improvements from wild species,” according to the company. “These evolutionary innovations are then used to guide precision breeding strategies for modern elite crop varieties.”
Wild Bio has its origins in the University of Oxford, from where founders Dr Ross Hendron and Irishman Prof Steve Kelly spun out the business in 2021, in order to move their scientific research out of the lab and onto the farm. Today the company has a team of 30 in their Oxford headquarters, and has field trials in four countries.
“Advancing agriculture has limitless potential to help people and the planet,” said Dr Ross Hendron, Co-founder and CEO of Wild Bio. “So to achieve meaningful, scalable impact, we need the right investors who are truly aligned with that big vision. I’m deeply grateful to EIT and to our current investors for sharing our excitement about what we’ve accomplished so far, and for their united support as we embark on this ambitious growth journey together.”
His co-founder and Wild Bio chief science officer, Prof Steve Kelly, who is also head of the Plant Biology Institute at EIT says that combining the research at EIT and Wild will “create a powerful synergy that could reshape sustainable agriculture on a global scale”.
“Together, we will accelerate our ability to bring new technologies to market and deliver innovative solutions that enhance crop resilience, boost yields, and promote environmental sustainability,” he said.
Founder of EIT Larry Ellison – better known to most as the chair of Oracle – welcomed the investment: “The ultimate goal is to grow these new crop varieties on a commercial scale and help provide food security around the world. EIT is committed to working with Wild Bio to reach this goal.”
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At the ESMO Congress 2025 in Berlin, Dr. Martina Carullo (Pisa, Italy) presented groundbreaking findings from the translational program of AtezoTRIBE and AVETRIC, two clinical trials exploring immunotherapy in proficient mismatch repair (pMMR) metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC). Using the Lunit SCOPE IO artificial intelligence (AI) platform, the investigators developed and validated a digital biomarker capable of predicting which pMMR tumors benefit from immune checkpoint inhibition—an area long considered resistant to immunotherapy.
Background
Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have transformed treatment outcomes for patients with deficient mismatch repair (dMMR/MSI-H) mCRC, but have shown minimal activity in pMMR tumors, which constitute the vast majority of metastatic cases. Identifying predictive markers within this refractory group remains one of the central challenges in gastrointestinal oncology.
Recent advances in AI-driven pathology have enabled quantitative analysis of the tumor microenvironment on digitized hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) slides. By mapping immune, stromal, and tumor cell populations, AI models can capture subtle biological patterns invisible to traditional pathology. The present study used this approach to generate an AI-derived biomarker that could distinguish responders from non-responders to ICI-based regimens in pMMR mCRC.
Methods
The analysis incorporated pre-treatment tumor slides from patients enrolled in AtezoTRIBE (NCT03721653) and AVETRIC (NCT04513951). In AtezoTRIBE, patients received FOLFOXIRI/bevacizumab with or without atezolizumab, while in AVETRIC, the regimen was FOLFOXIRI/cetuximab/avelumab.
Using the Lunit SCOPE IO platform, the research team quantified the density of lymphocytes, fibroblasts, macrophages, endothelial, mitotic, and tumor cells within both cancer areas and surrounding stroma. A multivariate Cox regression model was trained on the atezolizumab-treated arm of AtezoTRIBE to identify cellular features most predictive of progression-free survival (PFS). A cut-off optimized for PFS was then applied to classify tumors as biomarker-high or biomarker-low, with AVETRIC serving as an external validation set.
Results from AtezoTRIBE
The AI-based analysis was conducted on whole-slide images from 161 patients. The resulting biomarker integrated densities of tumor and mitotic cells in the cancer area, lymphocytes in the tumor core, and fibroblasts, macrophages, and endothelial cells in the stroma. Of the evaluated patients, 113 (70%) were classified as biomarker-high, a group characterized by older age (p = 0.030) and a higher frequency of liver metastases (p = 0.023).
In the atezolizumab arm, biomarker-high patients achieved significantly superior outcomes compared with biomarker-low ones, with PFS p = 0.036 and overall survival (OS) p = 0.024. No such association was observed in the control arm (PFS p = 0.564; OS p = 0.186).
A formal treatment–biomarker interaction analysis showed a stronger benefit from atezolizumab among biomarker-high patients (HR for PFS 0.69; 95% CI 0.45–1.04 and HR for OS 0.54; 95% CI 0.33–0.88), while biomarker-low tumors did not derive advantage (HR for PFS 1.34; 95% CI 0.66–2.72 and HR for OS 1.70; 95% CI 0.69–4.20).
Validation in AVETRIC
The model was independently tested on 48 patients from the AVETRIC trial. Thirty-six (75%) were classified as biomarker-high and displayed numerically improved outcomes compared with biomarker-low cases, with PFS p = 0.043and OS p = 0.053. The validation confirmed the reproducibility of the AI-generated signature across different ICI-based regimens and patient populations.
Interpretation
This dual-trial analysis demonstrates that an AI-defined histologic signature reflecting immune–stromal interactions can predict the benefit of immunotherapy even in microsatellite-stable disease. The biomarker captures a complex interplay between immune infiltration and stromal architecture—features often underestimated by genomic profiling alone.
By transforming standard H&E slides into predictive, quantifiable datasets, this work illustrates how digital pathology and AI can refine patient selection for immunotherapy and accelerate the transition toward precision oncology in pMMR mCRC.
You can read the full abstract here.
Conclusion
The AtezoTRIBE and AVETRIC translational analyses show that AI-derived tumor microenvironment biomarkerscan identify subsets of pMMR colorectal cancer patients who benefit from ICI-based therapy. In AtezoTRIBE, biomarker-high status correlated with significantly longer PFS (p = 0.036) and OS (p = 0.024) under atezolizumab, and these findings were validated in AVETRIC (PFS p = 0.043; OS p = 0.053).
These results mark an important advance in AI-assisted immuno-oncology, suggesting that digital pathology could soon complement molecular testing in guiding treatment for colorectal cancer beyond MSI status.
Current account recorded €12 billion surplus in August 2025, down from €30 billion in previous month
Current account surplus amounted to €303 billion (2.0% of euro area GDP) in the 12 months to August 2025, down from €404 billion (2.7%) one year earlier
In financial account, euro area residents’ net acquisitions of non-euro area portfolio investment securities totalled €848 billion and non-residents’ net acquisitions of euro area portfolio investment securities totalled €745 billion in the 12 months to August 2025
Chart 1
Euro area current account balance
(EUR billions unless otherwise indicated; working day and seasonally adjusted data)
Source: ECB.
The current account of the euro area recorded a surplus of €12 billion in August 2025, a decrease of €18 billion from the previous month (Chart 1 and Table 1). Surpluses were recorded for goods (€15 billion) and services (€14 billion). Deficits were recorded for secondary income (€16 billion) and primary income (€1 billion).
Table 1
Current account of the euro area
(EUR billions unless otherwise indicated; transactions; working day and seasonally adjusted data)
Source: ECB.
Note: Discrepancies between totals and their components may be due to rounding.
Data for the current account of the euro area
In the 12 months to August 2025, the current account recorded a surplus of €303 billion (2.0% of euro area GDP), compared with a surplus of €404 billion (2.7% of euro area GDP) one year earlier. This decrease was explained by a deterioration of all the accounts, particularly by a switch from a surplus (€41 billion) to a deficit (€11 billion) for primary income, but also by a larger deficit for secondary income (up from €167 billion to €186 billion), and reductions in the surplus for services (down from €169 billion to €154 billion) and goods (down from €360 billion to €347 billion).
Chart 2
Selected items of the euro area financial account
(EUR billions; 12-month cumulated data)
Source: ECB.
Notes: For assets, a positive (negative) number indicates net purchases (sales) of non-euro area instruments by euro area investors. For liabilities, a positive (negative) number indicates net sales (purchases) of euro area instruments by non-euro area investors.
In direct investment, euro area residents made net investments of €123 billion in non-euro area assets in the 12 months to August 2025, following net disinvestments of €191 billion one year earlier (Chart 2 and Table 2). Non-residents invested €57 billion in net terms in euro area assets in the 12 months to August 2025, following net disinvestments of €472 billion one year earlier.
In portfolio investment, euro area residents’ net purchases of non-euro area equity increased to €226 billion in the 12 months to August 2025, up from €139 billion one year earlier. Over the same period, net purchases of non-euro area debt securities by euro area residents increased to €623 billion, up from €420 billion. Non-residents’ net purchases of euro area equity increased to €387 billion in the 12 months to August 2025, up from €370 billion one year earlier. Over the same period, non-residents made net purchases of euro area debt securities amounting to €359 billion, following net purchases of €415 billion.
Table 2
Financial account of the euro area
(EUR billions unless otherwise indicated; transactions; non-working day and non-seasonally adjusted data)
Source: ECB.
Notes: Decreases in assets and liabilities are shown with a minus sign. Net financial derivatives are reported under assets. “MFIs” stands for monetary financial institutions. Discrepancies between totals and their components may be due to rounding.
Data for the financial account of the euro area
In other investment, euro area residents recorded net acquisitions of non-euro area assets amounting to €489 billion in the 12 months to August 2025 (following net acquisitions of €202 billion one year earlier), while their net incurrence of liabilities was €367 billion (following net disposals of €209 billion one year earlier).
Chart 3
Monetary presentation of the balance of payments
(EUR billions; 12-month cumulated data)
Source: ECB.
Notes: “MFI net external assets (enhanced)” incorporates an adjustment to the MFI net external assets (as reported in the consolidated MFI balance sheet items statistics) based on information on MFI long-term liabilities held by non-residents, available in b.o.p. statistics. B.o.p. transactions refer only to transactions of non-MFI residents of the euro area. Financial transactions are shown as liabilities net of assets. “Other” includes financial derivatives and statistical discrepancies.
The monetary presentation of the balance of payments (Chart 3) shows that the net external assets (enhanced) of euro area MFIs increased by €245 billion in the 12 months to August 2025. This increase was driven by the current and capital accounts surplus and euro area non-MFIs’ net inflows in other investment and portfolio investment equity. These developments were partly offset by euro area non-MFIs’ net outflows in other flows, direct investment and portfolio investment debt.
In August 2025 the Eurosystem’s stock of reserve assets increased to €1,507.8 billion up from €1,499 billion in the previous month (Table 3). This increase was driven by positive price changes (€13.8 billion), mostly due to an increase in the price of gold, and, to a lesser extent, by net acquisitions of assets (€1.2 billion) which were partly offset by negative exchange rate changes (€6.2 billion).
Table 3
Reserve assets of the euro area
(EUR billions; amounts outstanding at the end of the period, flows during the period; non-working day and non-seasonally adjusted data)
Source: ECB.
Notes: “Other reserve assets” comprises currency and deposits, securities, financial derivatives (net) and other claims. Discrepancies between totals and their components may be due to rounding.
Data for the reserve assets of the euro area
Data revisions
This press release incorporates revisions to the data for July 2025. These revisions did not significantly alter the figures previously published.
Next releases:
Monthly balance of payments: 19 November 2025 (reference data up to September 2025)
Quarterly balance of payments: 13 January 2026 (reference data up to the third quarter of 2025)[1]
For media queries, please contact Benoît Deeg, tel.: +49 172 1683704.
Notes
Current account data are always seasonally and working day-adjusted, unless otherwise indicated, whereas capital and financial account data are neither seasonally nor working day-adjusted.
Hyperlinks in this press release lead to data that may change with subsequent releases as a result of revisions.
The discount retailer B&M has ousted its finance chief after reporting a £7m accounts blunder that will cut its annual earnings – its second profit warning within two weeks.
The company told investors it looking for a successor to Mike Schmidt, who is stepping down as chief financial officer, after the accounting error.
The company, which sells things ranging from DIY, electricals and garden products to toys, pet food and everyday essentials, discovered that £7m of overseas freight costs were not “correctly recognised in cost of goods sold,” after an update to its operating system earlier this year.
This means that adjusted profits for the year to March 2026 are now expected to be between £470m and £520m, down from its previous estimate of between £510m and £560m. For the first half, B&M expects profits of £191m, down from £198m.
Shares in the FTSE 250-listed company slumped by nearly 18% in early trading. They have lost nearly 50% of their value this year.
The retailer said Schmidt will remain with the group until a replacement is found. The system issue at the centre of the problem has since been fixed, it said.
B&M will commission an external review, and will provide a further update when it releases first-half results on 13 November.
One of Britain’s biggest discount retailers, it has been struggling and warned on profits earlier in October. It announced a “back to basics” plan under its new chief executive, Tjeerd Jegen, who took the helm in June.
It expects UK sales at stores open for at least a year to either fall, or rise in low single digits, this year.
Jegen said in early October that the company had cut prices and was working to refocus its ranges, improve on-shelf availability and “bring back excitement to our stores”.
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B&M also issued a profit warning in February, and in June blamed sliding sales on more cautious consumer spending, particularly among lower-income shoppers who are its main customers.
In a short statement on Monday, B&M said: “The board wishes Mike well for the future.”
B&M, founded in 1978, became one of Britain’s most successful retailers during the pandemic, when it was still run by the Arora brothers, Simon and Bobby. They acquired the business from Phildrew Investments in late 2004 when it was an ailing regional chain of 21 stores, and built it into a retail empire in the UK and France. It listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2014.
The company has 1,270 stores, mostly in the UK under the B&M, Heron Foods and B&M Express brands. The figure also includes 140 B&M shops in France.
