Category: 3. Business

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Nvidia would be blocked from selling advanced chips to China under a bipartisan bill that US senators introduced on Thursday as part of an effort to make it harder for Beijing to obtain critical American AI-related technology.

The Secure and Feasible Exports Chips Act would require the commerce secretary to deny export licences for advanced chips to China for 30 months. The bill would prevent Nvidia from selling the H200 and Blackwell, its most advanced chip, to China.

It comes as the White House weighs whether to allow Nvidia to export the H200 to China — a possibility that has alarmed some officials.

Pete Ricketts, the Republican chair of the Senate foreign relations east Asia sub-committee, who co-sponsored the legislation with Chris Coons, the top Democrat on the panel, said the US was leading in the artificial intelligence race with China largely because of its “dominance of global compute power”.

“Denying Beijing access to these chips is therefore essential,” Ricketts said. “Codifying President Trump’s current AI chip limitations on Communist China as US chip companies continue to rapidly innovate will allow us to widen our compute lead exponentially.”

Coons said: “The rest of the 21st century will be determined by who wins the AI race, and whether this technology is built on American values of free thought and free markets or the values of the Chinese Communist party.”

Other senators sponsoring the bill are Republicans Tom Cotton and Dave McCormick and Democrats Jeanne Shaheen and Andy Kim.

The bill comes as China hawks in Washington fear Donald Trump is ignoring security issues to preserve the trade deal he agreed with Chinese President Xi Jinping in October.

The FT reported on Wednesday that the US Treasury had halted plans to impose sanctions on China’s Ministry of State Security spy agency over “Salt Typhoon”, a massive cyber penetration of American telecom groups.

US officials said the administration did not plan to issue any big new export controls on China for the time being.

China would benefit greatly from access to Nvidia’s H200 chips, said Saif Khan, a chips expert at the Institute for Progress think-tank.

“Unfettered access to the H200 would allow China to build frontier-scale AI supercomputers to develop the most powerful AI systems, just at a moderately higher cost relative to cutting-edge Blackwell chips,” said Khan, a former White House and commerce department official.

“It would also arm Chinese cloud providers to compete globally with US hyperscalers.”

Nvidia chief Jensen Huang was in Washington on Wednesday and met Trump and Republican senators on the banking committee. Ahead of the meeting with the committee, he said Beijing would not accept degraded chips and that US companies should be able to export their most competitive chips to China.

John Kennedy, a Republican senator on the committee, told reporters Huang was not a “credible source” on what the US should export to China.

“He’s got more money than the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, and he wants even more,” Kennedy said, according to the Associated Press.

“If I’m looking for someone to give me objective advice about whether we should make our technology available to China, he’s not it,” he added.

Steve Bannon, the former White House strategist in the first Trump administration who is influential in the Maga movement, said the US should not be exporting advanced chips to China, particularly as Chinese companies such as DeepSeek have made such advances in AI.

“If this is in fact a ‘Sputnik Moment’ because of DeepSeek then we should ban all chip sales, especially high-end, but also stop all financial support — no access to debt or equity capital markets, no training, no Chinese students — just like in the cold war about nuclear weapons,” Bannon said.

He also took aim at Huang and David Sacks, the White House AI adviser who backs selling high-end chips to China as part of an AI “action plan” to make countries reliant on the American “technology stack”.

“David Sacks has acted as the agent for the Chinese Communist party and Jensen Huang is the arms merchant,” Bannon said.

Asked about the bill, Nvidia said the AI action plan “wisely recognises non-military businesses everywhere should be able to choose the American technology stack, promoting US jobs and promoting national security”.

In response to Bannon’s comment, the company said: “AI is not an atomic bomb. No one should have an atomic bomb. Everyone should have AI.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

(Bloomberg) — A rally that put the stock market within a striking distance of its all-time highs struggled to gain a whole lot of traction ahead of next week’s Federal Reserve decision. Bitcoin halted its rebound. Bonds fell.

The S&P 500 barely budged. Bets on a Fed reduction remained intact despite a slide in jobless claims — a noisy reading that captured the Thanksgiving period. Meta Platforms Inc. jumped about 3.5% as Bloomberg News reported executives are considering budget cuts for the metaverse group. A gauge of small caps climbed almost 1%.

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Worries that the frenzy around artificial-intelligence has gone too far caused a recent wobble in equities. But the strong outlook for the sector and wagers that policy easing will fuel corporate profits bolstered hopes on further gains.

“The key question hanging over markets is whether a potential Federal Reserve rate cut next week can trigger a so-called Santa rally,” said Fawad Razaqzada at Forex.com. “For now, the S&P 500 forecast remains cautiously constructive, albeit with more hesitancy creeping in.”

The pattern for the first couple of weeks of December could prove far “choppier” than the last part of the month, noted Mark Newton at Fundstrat Global Advisors. With bets on a December rate cut rising to near certainty, he said we’re gradually seeing sectors like industrials, financials and small caps climbing.

The S&P 500 closed near 6,860. The yield on 10-year Treasuries rose four basis points to 4.1%. The dollar fluctuated. Bitcoin dropped below $93,000.

Given the equity market’s snapback from late November, technicals have improved to match some of the bullish seasonality thought possible for this month, Newton added. While trends are bullish, he says technicals support further choppiness until after the Fed decision.

“The market’s ‘risk-on’ light is on, led by expectations for a Fed rate cut next week and a broadening rotation down-cap,” said Craig Johnson at Piper Sandler. “But we still anticipate more ‘backing and filling’ as the major indices approach their year-to-date highs.”

While the S&P 500 has made limited progress so far this week, several previously broken levels have now been reclaimed, reinforcing the impression that the bulls maintain a degree of control, noted Razaqzada.

To Matt Maley at Miller Tabak, while the market has spent the past few days consolidating gains, the set-up is a good one.

“So unless we get a big reversal over the next few trading days, the advantage will definitely be with the bulls,” he said.

Maley notes that one area that could do well if we get a strong year-end rally is the small-cap space.

“A push to a new significant all-time high might finally attract the kind of momentum money that could help this part of the stock market outperform,” he said. “Of course, if the mega-cap tech stocks start to roll over in a big way, all bets will be off.”

At Interactive Brokers, Jose Torres noted that the cyclically oriented Russell 2000 is sustaining its recent momentum and is poised to rally in an environment of looser financial conditions alongside a still solid economy.

While the US tech sector is likely to remain a key driver for the market’s next leg up, its recent underperformance also points to other compelling opportunities across the market, according to Ulrike Hoffmann-Burchardi at UBS Global Wealth Management.

“As we expect US equities to rally into 2026, we think under-allocated investors should add exposure,” she said. “Beyond the tech sector, we expect a good performance from the health care, utilities, and banking sectors to broaden the foundation for further gains.”

Hoffmann-Burchardi says the Fed’s easing path is supportive to equities and also creates a positive backdrop for quality bonds.

On the macro front, applications for US unemployment benefits fell last week to the lowest in more than three years, indicating that employers are still largely holding onto workers despite a wave of recent layoffs.

Separate data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas showed announced layoffs at US companies fell last month after surging in October, but were still the highest for any November in three years.

“Overall, the net takeaway from the data served to confirm the crosscurrents evident in the labor landscape,” said Ian Lyngen at BMO Capital Markets.

Policymakers will not yet have the government’s November jobs report in hand for their meeting next week. The report, originally due Dec. 5, was delayed until Dec. 16 as a result of the record-long government shutdown. That release will also include October payrolls figures.

“There remain some negative payroll employment readings. But the US labor market is not collapsing based on timely data and reports that have leading indicator properties,” said Don Rissmiller at Strategas. “We continue to believe the Fed will cut the fed funds rate again by 25 basis points in December.”

While investors are largely betting policymakers will cut rates again, officials have rarely been so divided as many still prefer leaving rates elevated to keep inflation in check.

Before their final policy meeting of the year, Fed officials will get a dated reading on their preferred inflation gauge. On Friday, the September income and spending report — long delayed because of the government shutdown — is due to be released.

The figures will include the personal consumption expenditures price index and a core measure that excludes food and energy. Economists project a third-straight 0.2% increase in the core index. That would keep the year-over-year figure hovering just below 3%, a sign that inflationary pressures are stable, yet sticky.

“We continue to expect two rate cuts by the end of the first quarter of 2026, with Friday’s personal consumption expenditure index likely to show price pressures under control,” said Hoffmann-Burchardi at UBS Global Wealth Management.

Corporate Highlights:

Meta Platforms Inc.’s Mark Zuckerberg is expected to meaningfully cut resources for building the so-called metaverse, an effort that he once framed as the future of the company and the reason for changing its name from Facebook Inc. Meta Platforms risks a temporary European Union ban on the rollout of new policies over how its AI features in WhatsApp, after being hit by the latest probe into Big Tech’s alleged dominance on the continent. Salesforce Inc. gave an outlook for revenue in the current period that topped analysts’ estimates, suggesting the software company is persuading customers to buy its AI tools. Snowflake Inc.’s forecast for sales and profit margin in the current quarter raised concerns the company isn’t yet making enough money from its AI-based tools. Dollar General Corp. raised its full-year outlook, showing how value-focused retailers are winning over consumers hunting for deals. Kroger Co. lowered the top end of its full-year sales forecast, sounding a note of caution that competition is intensifying among food sellers for increasingly discerning consumers. PepsiCo Inc. is nearing a settlement agreement with activist investor Elliott Investment Management, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, without providing details. Paramount Skydance Corp. accused Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. of failing to conduct a fair auction, saying the film and TV company isn’t acting in its shareholders’ best interests. Versant Media Group Inc., the company being spun off from Comcast Corp., is making acquisitions to diversify beyond its core business of cable-TV networks. Toronto-Dominion Bank, Bank of Montreal and Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce all beat estimates on results that included strong performance in their capital-markets businesses, continuing a trend seen across other Canadian lenders and wrapping up a year marked by buoyant markets and more advisory work. Novo Nordisk A/S left open the door for additional work on its pill version of Ozempic for Alzheimer’s disease after a pair of failed trials, saying that patients showed a biological response in a handful of areas despite getting no cognitive improvement. Stellantis NV touted promising signs of a turnaround at its Ram and Jeep brands after adding powerful engines and more options for vehicles without a plug. Volkswagen AG plans to convert its small-scale assembly plant in Dresden into an innovation hub after stopping car output, following through on a pledge to avoid factory closures in Germany. Rio Tinto Group’s new chief executive will focus on cutting costs and selling assets in a bid to turn the world’s second largest miner into a slimmed-down operation centered primarily on iron ore and copper. Some of the main moves in markets:

Stocks

The S&P 500 rose 0.1% as of 4 p.m. New York time The Nasdaq 100 was little changed The Dow Jones Industrial Average was little changed The MSCI World Index rose 0.3% Bloomberg Magnificent 7 Total Return Index rose 0.5% The Russell 2000 Index rose 0.8% Meta rose 3.4% Currencies

The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was little changed The euro fell 0.2% to $1.1644 The British pound fell 0.2% to $1.3329 The Japanese yen was little changed at 155.10 per dollar Cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin fell 1.3% to $92,459.23 Ether fell 0.8% to $3,139.48 Bonds

The yield on 10-year Treasuries advanced four basis points to 4.10% Germany’s 10-year yield advanced two basis points to 2.77% Britain’s 10-year yield declined one basis point to 4.43% Commodities

West Texas Intermediate crude rose 1.3% to $59.71 a barrel Spot gold rose 0.2% to $4,210.02 an ounce ©2025 Bloomberg L.P.

Blue-collar workers and manufacturers want the Albanese government to stare down the gas giants as it designs a new gas reservation scheme, warning the industry’s preferred approach would fail to quickly contain prices.

The federal government is expected to unveil plans for an east coast gas reserve as soon as next week after a six-month review of the gas market.

After rubbishing Peter Dutton’s election promise to force gas exporters to divert supplies into the east coast market, Labor is preparing to launch its own intervention to avert potential supply shortages and contain prices for households and businesses.

The government is understood to still be weighing up a potential model as it faces competing demands from gas producers, unions and manufacturers.

The government is also sensitive to concerns from customers in Japan and South Korea, which are heavily reliant on Australian gas exports and have resisted past government interventions that they fear threaten supplies.

The gas industry and the federal Coalition insist the reservation policy must only apply to new gas projects. But unions and large energy users maintain any reservation must capture gas from existing projects, except for those already under contract for export.

Paul Farrow, the national secretary of the Australian Workers’ Union, said a policy that only applied to future projects would “achieve virtually nothing for anyone”.

“To shore up Australian industry for the 21st century, we need affordable gas reserved for domestic use right now – not years down the track,” said Farrow, whose union has campaigned for years for Labor to adopt the policy.

Manufacturing Australia, which represents large energy users including BlueScope Steel and Rheem, has argued an “effective” gas reservation scheme is critical to curtail the high gas prices that risk jobs in the sector.

“To be effective, gas reservation needs to put enough gas into the local market to see prices fall. In the short term, that means immediate reservation of uncontracted gas,” said Ben Eade, the chief executive of Manufacturing Australia.

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“In the medium term, we can grandfather existing export contracts, but reservation should apply to all new contracts, variations or renewals, any gas project expansions or variations and any new gas production from this point onward.”

Two models canvassed

The government has canvassed two models for a gas reservation in private consultation sessions with stakeholders over the past six weeks, two sources familiar with the development of the policy confirmed to Guardian Australia.

The first would create a system in which the three Queensland-based LNG exporters supply a prescribed amount of gas into the domestic market in exchange for export permits. The second option would require all gas producers – exporters and domestic-only producers – to supply a certain volume into the local market, the sources said.

The AWU wants the government to adopt the first option to directly target the exporters, which they say “broke the domestic market in the first place”.

East coast gas prices have tripled over the past decade after the major LNG export terminals linked the domestic market to international demand.

“Australian industry has been bleeding for over a decade while we’ve waited for the gas reservation scheme we desperately need,” Farrow said.

“The priority now is getting a simple, workable model in place urgently – not designing some elaborate credit trading system that the gas companies will find ways to exploit.”

The government would not confirm details of options under consideration when contacted by Guardian Australia.

“The government is conducting a review of the gas market. The government is committed to ensuring Australian homes and businesses get access to Australian gas at fair prices,” a spokesperson said.

A gas reservation scheme already exists for the separate Western Australian market, which requires exporters to supply the equivalent of 15% of LNG production to the local market.

The Labor MP and former industry minister Ed Husic wants his government to pursue even more drastic interventions, including cracking down on importers that on-sell Australian gas to third countries.

“It’s a real barbecue-stopper for many Australians that foreign buyers are on-selling our gas while we’re facing forecasts of local gas shortages,” Husic said.

The Greens are advocating a different approach to prevent domestic gas shortages, backing the Australian Council of Trade Union’s push for a 25% levy on LNG exports.

“Taxing gas will be much more effective way of keeping gas in this country and replacing the Petroleum Resources Rent Tax (PRRT) that’s broken and simply not bringing enough money,” said Steph Hodgins-May, the assistant climate spokesperson for the Greens.

As Australia rides the AI boom with dozens of new investments in datacentres in Sydney and Melbourne, experts are warning about the impact these massive projects will have on already strained water resources.

Water demand to service datacentres in Sydney alone is forecast to be larger than the volume of Canberra’s total drinking water within the next decade.

In Melbourne the Victorian government has announced a “$5.5m investment to become Australia’s datacentre capital”, but the hyperscale datacentre applications on hand already exceed the water demands of nearly all of the state’s top 30 business customers combined.

Technology companies, including Open AI and Atlassian, are pushing for Australia to become a hub for data processing and storage. But with 260 datacentres operating and dozens more in the offing, experts are flagging concerns about the impact on the supply of drinking water.

Sydney Water has estimated up to 250 megalitres a day would be needed to service the industry by 2035 (a larger volume than Canberra’s total drinking water).

Cooling requires ‘huge amount of water’

Prof Priya Rajagopalan, director of the Post Carbon Research Centre at RMIT, says water and electricity demands of datacentres depend on the cooling technology used.

“If you’re just using evaporative cooling, there is a lot of water loss from the evaporation, but if you are using sealers, there is no water loss but it requires a huge amount of water to cool,” she says.

While older datacentres tend to rely on air cooling, demand for more computing power means higher server rack density so the output is warmer, meaning centres have turned to water for cooling .

The amount of water used in a datacentre can vary greatly. Some centres, such as NextDC, are moving towards liquid-to-chip cooling, which cools the processor or GPU directly instead of using air or water to cool the whole room.

NextDC says it has completed an initial smaller deployment of the cooling technology but it has the capacity to scale up for ultra-high-density environments to allow for greater processing power without an associated rise in power consumption because liquid cooling is more efficient. The company says its modelling suggests power usage effectiveness (PUE, a measure of energy efficiency) could go as low as 1.15.

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The datacentre industry accounts for its sustainability with two metrics: water usage effectiveness (WUE) and power usage effectiveness (PUE). These measure the amount of water or power used relative to computing work.

WUE is measured by annual water use divided by annual IT energy use (kWh). For example, a 100MW datacentre using 3ML a day would have a WUE of 1.25. The closer the number is to 1, the more efficient it is. Several countries mandate minimum standards. Malaysia has recommended a WUE of 1.8, for example.

But even efficient facilities can still use large quantities of water and energy, at scale.

NextDC’s PUE in the last financial year was 1.44, up from 1.42 the previous year, which the company says “reflects the dynamic nature of customer activity across our fleet and the scaling up of new facilities”.

Calls for ban on use of drinking water

Sydney Water says its estimates of datacentre water use are being reviewed regularly. The utility is exploring climate-resilient and alternative water sources such as recycled water and stormwater harvesting to prepare for future demand.

“All proposed datacentre connections are individually assessed to confirm there is sufficient local network capacity and operators may be required to fund upgrades if additional servicing is needed,” a Sydney Water spokesperson says.

In its submission to the Victorian pricing review for 2026 to 2031, Melbourne Water noted that hyperscale datacentre operators that have put in applications for connections have “projected instantaneous or annual demands exceeding nearly all top 30 non-residential customers in Melbourne”.

“We have not accounted for this in our demand forecasts or expenditure planning,” Melbourne Water said.

It has sought upfront capital contributions from the companies so the financial burden of works required “does not fall on the broader customer base”.

Greater Western Water in Victoria had 19 datacentre applications on hand, according to documents obtained by the ABC, and provided to the Guardian.

The Concerned Waterways Alliance, a network of Victorian community and environment groups, has flagged its concerns about the diversion of large volumes of drinking water to cool servers, when many of the state’s water resources are already stretched.

Cameron Steele, a spokesperson for the alliance, says datacentre growth could increase Melbourne’s reliance on desalinated water and reduce water available for environmental flows, with the associated costs borne by the community. The groups have called for a ban on the use of drinking water for cooling, and mandatory public reporting of water use for all centres.

“We would strongly advocate for the use of recycled water for datacentres rather than potable drinking water.”

Closed-loop cooling

In hotter climates, such as large parts of Australia during the summer months, centres require more energy or water to keep cool.

Danielle Francis, manager of customer and policy at the Water Services Association of Australia, says there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach for how much energy and water datacentres use because it will depend on the local constraints such as land, noise restrictions and availability of water.

“We’re always balancing all the different customers, and that’s the need for residential areas and also non-residential customers, as well as of course environmental needs,” Francis says.

“It is true that there are quite a lot of datacentre applications. And the cumulative impact is what we have to plan for … We have to obviously look at what the community impact of that is going to be.

“And sometimes they do like to cluster near each other and be in a similar location.”

One centre under construction in Sydney’s Marsden Park is a 504MW datacentre spanning 20 hectares, with six four-storey buildings. The CDC centre will become the largest data campus in the southern hemisphere, the company has boasted.

In the last financial year, CDC used 95.8% renewable electricity in its operational datacentres, and the company boasts a PUE of 1.38 and a WUE of 0.01. A spokesperson for the company says it has been able to achieve this through a closed-loop cooling system that eliminates ongoing water draw, rather than relying on the traditional evaporative cooling systems.

“The closed-loop systems at CDC are filled once at the beginning of their life and operate without ongoing water draw, evaporation or waste, ensuring we are preserving water while still maintaining thermal performance,” a spokesperson says.

“It’s a model designed for Australia, a country shaped by drought and water stress, and built for long-term sustainability and sets an industry standard.”

Planning documents for the centre reveal that, despite CDC’s efforts, there remains some community concern over the project.

In a June letter, the acting chief executive of the western health district of New South Wales, Peter Rophail, said the development was too close to vulnerable communities, and the unprecedented scale of the development was untested and represented an unsuitable risk to western Sydney communities.

“The proposal does not provide any assurance that the operation can sufficiently adjust or mitigate environmental exposures during extreme heat weather events so as not to pose an unreasonable risk to human health,” Rophail said.

The post-pandemic decline in infection-prevention practices, along with the broader crash in global health finance, are undermining progress against antimicrobial resistance –  one of the planet’s most urgent health threats. At a recent panel discussion hosted by the Geneva Health Forum (GHF), leading experts from WHO, academia, biotech, and patient advocacy warned that national AMR plans are stalling in the absence of  funding. And pipelines for new drug development remain desperately underfinanced. 

Governance and finance: ‘domestic investment is missing link’

For Dr. Sarah Paulin-Deschenaux, a technical officer in WHO’s AMR department, the most troubling trend is how quickly hard-won gains from the COVID-19 era have faded.

During the pandemic, “there was political willingness, there was financing for infection prevention and control (IPC), WASH and hand hygiene,” she said. “But priorities shifted, financing shifted —and many behaviours we had begun to institutionalize were not sustained.”

Speaking at the GHF event convened during World AMR Awareness week, in late November, she noted that most countries still lack the institutional structures required to implement AMR strategies at scale. Recent WHO analysis reveals:

• Only 34% of countries have nationwide infection prevention and control (IPC) programmes;
• Nearly 60 countries report no IPC systems in place;
• IPC, public awareness, and antimicrobial-use monitoring consistently score as the weakest indicators in national action plan implementation.

On top of that, only one in four healthcare healthcare facilities globally have access to clean running water. And only two in five healthcare facilities have access to hand hygiene facilities at the point of care.

“How are you supposed to have effective infection prevention when you don’t have the enabling environment? So then you wind up using antibiotics as a substitute for good infection prevention and WASH,” Paulin-Deschenaux said.

The structural problem, she stressed, is that AMR commitments sit too low in government hierarchies. “Ministries of Health in developing and lower-middle income countries are not putting any domestic financing towards the actual implementation of their national action plans on AMR.

In contrast,  governance on antimicrobial resistance needs to be “embedded in the highest political office—in the president’s office. That’s where we need the political commitment. Only then will we have tangible results.”

Meeting the UN target of reducing AMR deaths by 10% by 2030

Post-pandemic, that sense of urgency hardly registers among politicians – even though AMR is the third leading cause of mortality in the world. 

In 2024, over 1 million deaths are directly linked to bacterial AMR, and 5 million deaths indirectly, according to the first major landmark study on the disease burden, published last year in The Lancet.  

In a business as usual scenario, AMR will cause 39 million deaths worldwide over the next 25 years, equivalent to over 3 deaths every minute, WHO projects. 

At the UN High Level Meeting on AMR in 2024, countries agreed to set a target for reducing  AMR deaths by 10% by 2030. 

Following on from the High Level Declaration on AMR, Nigeria will host a ministerial-level review in June 2026 of progress. But momentum has stagnated at a critical moment, Deschenaux and other experts at the panel warned. 

Lax regulatory measures in many developing countries continue to make antibiotics far too available over-the-counter, inviting overuse that breeds pathogen resistance – or ‘superbugs’. Public awareness of AMR is low – with the term difficult to even translate from English. The R&D pipeline for new antibiotics is “broken”. And along with human misuse, animal overuse of the life-saving drugs remains the elephant in the room – far greater quantities of antibiotics than human health globally.   

AI and diagnostics: can LMICs benefit from the potential?

Against that gloomy landscape, can new technology be one solution? Indeed, AI driven tools offer huge potential to improve diagnostic capacity for clinicians who often struggle to determine if a fever or other symptoms of illness are viral or bacterial in origin. Accurate diagnosis, in turn, can lead to much faster as well as better decisions about treatment in situations where the right choice of drugs may be the difference between life and death. 

New technologies, however, remain challenging to adapt to resource-limited settings that need them most.

Paulin-Deschenaux noted a promising Colombian pilot that uses AI to support clinical decisions in an environment where diagnostic tools are limited.  

“But [too] often these types of innovations stay within the high income country setting,” she said, expressing hopes that new public-private partnerships can help move the needle for other developing countries. 

On the front lines of sepsis prevention, Melissa Mead, UK Sepsis Trust Ambassador, described how NHS England is testing AI tools to help emergency departments distinguish patients at risk of sepsis—those “in that grey area, that cusp” where timely antibiotic decisions are crucial.

Italian urologist Prof. Tommaso Cai, meanwhile, noted that AI-assisted prescription models have already demonstrated clinical promise in more precise diagnosis and treatment of drug-resistant urinary tract infections – integrating individual patient histories and local resistance data.

“The system can suggest the correct antibiotic,” he said—offering clinicians a lifeline in an era where common bacteria are increasingly resistant to some drugs – but not others. 

However, technological innovation must be coupled with clinician training, behaviour change frameworks, and policy safeguards to prevent algorithm-driven misuse or overuse, the experts stressed. 

Innovation crisis: a broken market for new antibiotics

While AI developments generate optimism, the innovation ecosystem behind new antimicrobials and infection-prevention technologies remains fragile.

Dr. Ingrid Wanninger, board member of the BEAM Alliance a European AMR innovation hub for Biotech, noted that small and medium-sized firms are leading the way in R&D. But they face a gauntlet of challenges to bring new drugs to market. 

“SMEs produce the majority of innovation, yet they operate with one to two years of financial runway,” she said. 

“We are really lost here. If you go to private investors and say you are working in infectious diseases, they have no interest. In AMR, business models are lacking. Big pharma has left the field.

 “Private investors won’t touch infectious diseases, and the AMR space is seen as too risky,” she added, describing the current landscape as “a broken market.”

Traditionally, the existing public-private innovation engines like —CARB-X  and GARDP— have primarily supported R&D on new diagnostics or antibiotic treatments – leaving preventive therapies as a kind of outlier. 

“Prevention will not solve the whole AMR topic, but we need to have it as well,” said Wanninger, citing promising approaches such as bacteriophages (viruses that kill bacteria); and bacteriophage-derived endolysins (enzymes that have powerful antimicrobial properties); as well as immune modulators.

In the past year alone, two BEAM member companies working on novel antimicrobials and bacteriophage-based interventions declared bankruptcy despite having viable technologies, she noted.

Along with more specific R&D calls for such methods, there is a continuing need for more integrated “push” mechanisms to de-risk early R&D; along with government and market-driven “pull incentives” to secure predictable uptake and revenue streams once products are put on the market. 

Without both, she warned, “You can have the innovation and the patents, but if financing isn’t there, companies disappear—and the expertise disappears with them.”

Public awareness and trust

While the pandemic also saw a huge acceleration in the R&D timeline for drugs and vaccines, the clock has slowed once more in the post-pandemic era. “We’ve gone back to six-or ten-years to develop an antibiotic, to get through the political rhetoric,” Mead said.

Paradoxically, the speed and way in which new COVID treatments were developed and rolled out may have also contributed to a crisis of public trust.  That, along with the current political climate has led to falling vaccination rates in many developed countries, including the UK.  And fewer vaccinations also leads to more antibiotic use amongst people who do actually fall ill, Mead noted. 

In many low and middle income countries, meanwhile, antibiotics can still be purchased widely over the counter – while in higher income countries they are generally impossible to obtain without a prescription – incentivizing diverse forms of misuse and hoarding. 

“In high-income countries, accessing an antibiotic when appropriate can be complex and expensive. That’s why households keep full courses of broad-spectrum antibiotics at home,” noted Raj Kumar, a physician and former UN medical officer, speaking from the floor of the GHF event.

Altogether, the AMR threat is poorly understood not only by politicians but by the public at large.  Even the language used by scientists doesn’t resonate.  

Overall there is a need to reframe AMR communication to focus on infection, behaviour change, and relatable human impact.

“People understand infections, not AMR,” said Mead. “If a leaflet says antimicrobial resistance, they won’t pick it up. If it says infection, they will.”

In some countries, including Malawi, there is no direct translation for “AMR,” noted Paulin Deschanaux, complicating public-health messaging.

She described how WHO is working with patient survivors’ groups to shift communication strategies toward relatable human stories, rather than technical terminology. 

But conversely, celebrity-led stories and campaigns can backfire, Mead warned, raising questions about motivation and remuneration. “People relate to ordinary families. Real stories drive behaviour change far more effectively than professional endorsements.”  

Animal health oft-ignored factor 

AMR issues and solutions also must be integrated into agriculture practices, from veterinary care to fisheries and plant production, panelists acknowledged.  

Under pressure from industry, proposed targets for reducing by 30% antibiotics use in agri-food systems by 2030 were dropped from the 2024 UN High Level Declaration – even though livestock and other food production in fact uses far larager volumes of the drugs than human health systems.  

But even if human health systems use fewer drugs, that doesn’t obviate the need for more robust infection prevention and control in clinical settings, Cai stressed: “Lower proportional use is not an excuse to relax standards.” 

And while the window for action is narrowing, it’s not too late yet to rebuild IPC systems with lessons learned from the pandemic; unlock more domestic finance; and create sustainable market incentives for innovation.

“We’re still in our [post-pandemic] learning phase,” Paulin-Deschenaux said. “It’s such a multifaceted approach. You need the education, the awareness, behavior change. It has to start in schools. It has to go all the way through to healthcare professionals’ in-service training. It’s really a continuous process. But I think the core of it, unfortunately, is priorities. Priorities change, financing shifts. And that is unfortunate.”

Image Credits: WHO/Sarah Pabst, UNICEF , HP Watch , The Lancet, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, NIAID, Yvan Hutin/WHO, WHO , Van Boeckel et al, ETH Zurich.

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A recurring theme in 2025 in the world of private equity is “keeping the wolf from the door”. For companies on the brink of running out of money, that manifests through the increasing popularity of so-called “liability management” exercises, where zombie companies are temporarily kept upright by tapping bountiful debt markets and strong-arming investors.

For companies in private equity portfolios that are not quite hobbled but not exactly thriving either, there are continuation vehicles. These are new funds created by the same private equity sponsor that can purchase a business when the original fund is at its contractual end. A way, in effect, of keeping a promising company in the fold.

A general rule in finance is that where there’s innovation there’s litigation. Liability management has produced a glut of US court cases; now continuation vehicles look likely to follow. A Middle Eastern wealth fund, the Abu Dhabi Investment Council, has sued a private equity firm, Energy & Minerals Group, which wants to shift a natural gas driller it owns from one pocket to another.

The problem, ADIC says, is that the deal is great for the private equity firm, but not for the investors in the original fund. It contends the company in question, Ascent Resources, could be worth more than $7bn in a regular sale or an initial public offering, yet in fact the stake being transferred by EMG suggests a valuation of just $5.5bn.

Such blow-ups are inevitable when a buyout firm is on both sides of the deal, as is the case where continuation vehicles are involved. There are certain safeguards, to be sure: transparency, independent advisers, “fairness opinions” and fiduciary duty. Some claims of wrongdoing might be meritorious and others not. Where the original investors don’t get a windfall, disappointment will often ensue.

ADIC describes being forced into a “Hobson’s choice”. It could put in new cash, or roll over its investment on terms it described as “materially worse than the status quo”. It also said in its lawsuit that EMG had not tried hard enough for third party, arms-length deals — though the Financial Times has reported other buyers passed on Ascent, believing the price too rich.

Private equity groups need to worry not just about selling assets to continuation funds, but the deals that come after. Where a continuation vehicle later makes a big profit by exiting its investment, it will spur claims — sincere or otherwise — that the limited partners in the first fund were taken for a ride. Some sponsors, including Clayton Dubilier & Rice, have netted sizeable profits through a second deal.

There are also examples that work the other way around. Clearlake Capital’s Wheels Pro went bankrupt in a successor fund. More recently, portable toilet company ISS, in a continuation vehicle backed by Fortress, Blackstone and Ares, is expected to be a wipeout, Bloomberg has reported.

Continuation vehicles, like liability management exercises, address real problems over timing and liquidity. Secondary funds, which buy whole slices of private equity portfolios, are another example.

But while the Masters of the Universe are good at navigating deadlines and cash crunches, they’re not always as deft at placating investors who feel they’ve got the rough end of the stick. For those people, litigation may continue to feel like the best medicine.

sujeet.indap@ft.com

The prosecution of prominent Washington lawyer Tom Goldstein has veered into an unusual appellate showdown involving pricey D.C. real estate, the constitutional right to counsel and a high-powered litigation funding firm that is set to be a witness in the case.

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“As a criminal defendant, I have a Sixth Amendment right to use ‘untainted’ assets that are necessary to pay the costs of my defense. The home itself is not ‘tainted,’” Goldstein said in his Nov. 26 appellate brief.

In any case, the government told the 4th Circuit, the home is being held as collateral for an appearance bond for Goldstein, who was deemed a flight risk by U.S. District Judge Lydia Kay Griggsby.

Attorneys for Goldstein at Munger, Tolles & Olson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

After getting turned down for one loan application in March 2021, Goldstein allegedly borrowed more than $5.6 million from a company that invests in litigation and used the funds to buy the Washington home. Goldstein never disclosed his personal debts to the funder, prosecutors said.

Goldstein revealed in his 4th Circuit brief last week that the funder is Parabellum Capital, a top litigation finance firm with offices in New York and Boston with more than $1.5 billion in investments as of last year. Goldstein said Parabellum placed no restrictions on the funds, which he used to buy the D.C. property and pay taxes.

Parabellum said in a statement that it is a witness in Goldstein’s criminal case and that the firm has not been accused of wrongdoing. “A minor part of the case involves small investments Parabellum made several years ago,” the firm said.

Goldstein’s bid to quickly sell the property faces an uphill battle given its connections to his bail conditions, white-collar experts said.

“The facts here are what’s going to be a problem for him,” said Michael Weinstein, who leads the white collar criminal defense practice at law firm Cole Schotz. Weinstein said he was a law school classmate of Goldstein’s at American University, but has no personal relationship to him and is not involved in the case.

“In my experience, the federal government typically prevails in cases where property is reasonably alleged to be a tainted asset,” said Arun Rao, a Mayer Brown partner and former deputy assistant U.S. attorney general.

Goldstein wants the 4th Circuit to reverse Griggsby’s ruling and allow the sale, or to order an evidentiary hearing on whether the house is a tainted asset.

A spokesperson for the Maryland U.S. attorney’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Under the settlement, Google will add a new control allowing users to limit data shared in online ad auctions and will notify account holders via email and a dedicated webpage. The plaintiffs value these changes at $1.4 billion.

Google, which has denied any wrongdoing, counters that the lawsuit delivered minimal success. There was no settlement fund, and the company said it was implementing only modest changes largely duplicating existing privacy settings.

Google has proposed capping the fee award at about $14.3 million. The court will weigh the competing proposals at a February hearing. Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Elizabeth Pritzker, a lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said Google’s filing “misstates the record and the law in an effort to diminish plaintiff’s counsel’s reasonable compensation for this significant result.”

– A federal judge in Philadelphia on Thursday rejected a bid by plaintiffs’ law firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro to force his recusal from long-running litigation over the drug thalidomide.

The Seattle-based law firm argued that communications between U.S. District Judge Paul Diamond and court-appointed official William Hangley were improper, citing hundreds of hours of contacts between them.

“The law does not require a judge’s recusal because a party dislikes his rulings,” Diamond wrote.

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ROME — Creative director Dario Vitale is leaving Italian fashion brand Versace only eight months after he was appointed, the company said in a statement Thursday.

Vitale’s exit comes just two days after Prada Group finalized its $1.375 billion cash acquisition of Versace, starting a new era for the brand.

“We would like to sincerely thank Dario for his outstanding contribution to the development of the brand’s creative strategy during this transition period, and we wish him all the very best in his future endeavors,” Versace said in a statement.

Vitale will exit the brand on Dec. 12 and his successor will be announced in due course, the company added.

Meanwhile, CEO Emmanuel Gintzburger will oversee the creative team.

Vitale’s ascension at Versace in April marked a dramatic turn for the fashion house. He was only the third creative director after Gianni Versace, who was killed in 1997, and his sister Donatella Versace, who assumed the role after his death until Vitale took over.

His first collection for the house debuted in September.

Extending the life cycle of digital devices and maximising the value of each component: this is the goal of the OnLife project, developed by Leonardo, which introduces a circular economy model applied to workplace assets. The initiative, which stems from a collaboration between Leonardo’s Sustainability and Digital Solutions departments, integrates digital technologies – from automation to artificial intelligence – with circular processes that reduce consumption, emissions and the use of raw materials, while generating social value for the communities in which the Group operates. The aim is to transform the traditional process of managing discarded PCs and monitors into a concrete opportunity f structured around three main drivers.

The first driver concerns the reuse of devices into the secondary market (PROSPERITY) through online sales channels, to contribute to the creation of a more inclusive and sustainable economy. The proceeds from the sale cover the costs of the project and the refurbishment of the PCs intended for donation. In this first phase, 160 assets were collected, 99% of which are prepared for reuse.

The second driver is digital inclusion (PEOPLE) and is part of HP’s Hope project: some of the decommissioned and refurbished devices are donated to non-profit organisations operating in areas with a greater digital divide. This initiative promotes access to technology, fosters interest in STEM subjects and creates new educational and professional opportunities.

The third area (PLANET) involves the implementation of advanced recycling processes for non-reusable devices to extract critical raw materials (CRMs), which are essential for the digital and green transition. This urban mining approach reduces dependence on virgin raw materials and helps to limit the overall environmental impact by cutting emissions and reducing the extraction of natural resources.