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Image: REUTERS/Steve Marcus
Wake up to the shifts shaping the future.
From boardroom shakeups and billion-dollar bets to the latest tech breakthroughs rewriting the rules, The Company Brief is your front-row seat to the stories moving markets and mindsets.
We cut through the noise so you can stay ahead of the curve, one bold business move at a time.
Asian stocks edge higher as US rate cut hopes rise
Asian share markets rallied on Tuesday as hopes grew that the Federal Reserve would deliver a December interest rate cut, while investors piled into global technology stocks, shrugging off concerns that the sector was becoming overheated.MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 1% led mainly by tech stocks, recouping some of the losses from last week when it fell 4%. The index is on course for a 3.8% drop in the month, its first monthly decline since March. Japan's Nikkei was up 0.8% in early trading on Tuesday after returning from a holiday on Monday. The index slid 3.5% last week as a bout of risk-off sentiment gripped markets. The prospect of a U.S. rate cut is rising after Fed Governor Christopher Waller said available data indicated that the U.S. job market remains weak enough to warrant another quarter-point cut to interest rates. Markets are pricing in an 85.1% chance of a cut of 25 basis points at the December meeting, according to CME's FedWatch Tool, up from 42.4% a week ago. The U.S central bank will meet on December 9 and 10.
African Union chair calls for fairer debt restructuring tools at summit with EU
Angolan President Joao Lourenco, current chair of the African Union, on Monday called for fairer debt restructuring tools and innovative financing instruments to support Africa's development. Lourenco's comments, delivered to African and European Union leaders assembled in Angola's capital, come as a growing number of African countries are at risk of debt distress. The Group of 20's Common Framework, set up during the COVID pandemic to speed up debt restructuring for poorer nations, has made limited progress, though last weekend's G20 summit in South Africa committed to improving it. "We are in dire need of a new vision for the financial relationship between Africa and international lending institutions so that we can invest in development without being stifled by unsustainable debt," Lourenco told the first day of an AU-EU summit.
Alphabet races toward $4 trillion valuation
Alphabet closed in on a $4 trillion valuation on Monday, set to become only the fourth company to enter the exclusive club, as the Google parent rides an artificial intelligence-driven rally. Shares of the company rose more than 5% to hit a record high of $315.9, giving it a market capitalisation of $3.82 trillion. The stock has climbed nearly 70% so far this year, far outperforming AI rivals Microsoft and Amazon.com. Nvidia, Microsoft and Apple have previously hit a $4 trillion valuation. Only Nvidia and Apple remain on the list. The surge reflects a striking reversal in sentiment toward Alphabet after some investors feared the company had lost its AI edge to OpenAI after the 2022 launch of ChatGPT, even though it invented much of the underlying technology behind generative AI. Alphabet has regained momentum this year by turning its cloud business, once an also-ran, into a key growth driver, drawing in Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway as an investor and winning strong early reviews for its new Gemini 3 model.