Europe: Mining, healthcare prop up shares; US-EU trade talks in focus
The pan-European Stoxx 600 index closed 0.54 per cent higher at 552.93, hitting its highest since June 11.
In the UK, the blue-chip FTSE 100 jumped 1.2 per cent to an all-time high, while Germany's DAX came off its record high to end 0.4 per cent lower. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU is working 'non-stop' to reach a low-tariff trade agreement with the US.
EU trade chief Maros Sefcovic said on Wednesday that good progress has been made on a framework trade agreement, and a deal may be possible within days.
The negotiators are also discussing potential measures to protect the EU auto industry, according to officials and auto industry sources.
European auto stocks climbed 2 per cent, with shares of Germany's BMW up 4.2 per cent after the automaker held a well-received pre-close earnings call.
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'The frequency of tariff-related news is on the rise again, and this crescendo of trade influences is likely to persist in the coming days, impacting markets directly affected by these developments,' Jochen Stanzl, chief market analyst at CMC Markets, said.
US President Donald Trump announced a new 50 per cent tariff on copper imports and a 50 per cent duty on goods from Brazil on Wednesday, both effective from Aug 1.
European mining stocks jumped 3.2 per cent to a more than three-month high, with London-listed shares of Glencore and Rio Tinto advancing about 4 per cent each.
Heavyweight healthcare stocks also gained 1.8 per cent, with Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk up 2.8 per cent.
The stocks reeling on Thursday were mostly banks, with a gauge for euro zone lenders down 1.6 per cent, though still hovering near its highest level since 2010.
At the bottom of the Stoxx 600 was Barry Callebaut, down 13.4 per cent after the Swiss chocolate maker cut its volume outlook for the third time this year.
Grafton shed 6.1 per cent after the building materials distributor and DIY retailer said it is not expecting a 'significant' increase in volumes this year.
In contrast, Aalberts rose 7.1 per cent after the Dutch industrial group agreed to acquire Grand Venture Technology.
Investors are now bracing for the second-quarter earnings season to assess how companies are navigating trade volatility.
The world's biggest supplier of computer chip-making equipment, ASML, will be the first of the European heavyweights to report earnings next week. REUTERS
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Straits Times
44 minutes ago
- Straits Times
AI has created a new global digital divide
The split is influencing geopolitics and global economics and creating new dependencies. In May, Mr Sam Altman, the CEO of the artificial intelligence company OpenAI, donned a helmet, work boots and a luminescent high-visibility vest to visit the construction site of the company's new data centre project in Texas. Bigger than New York's Central Park, the estimated US$60 billion (S$77 billion) project, which has its own natural gas plant, will be one of the most powerful computing hubs ever created when completed as soon as 2026. Around the same time as Mr Altman's visit to Texas, Professor Nicolás Wolovick, a computer science professor at the National University of Córdoba in Argentina, was running what counts as one of his country's most advanced AI computing hubs. It was in a converted room at the university, where wires snaked between ageing AI chips and server computers. 'Everything is becoming more split,' Professor Wolovick said. 'We are losing.' Artificial intelligence has created a new digital divide, fracturing the world between nations with the computing power for building cutting-edge AI systems and those without. The split is influencing geopolitics and global economics, creating new dependencies and prompting a desperate rush to not be excluded from a technology race that could reorder economies, drive scientific discovery and change the way that people live and work. The biggest beneficiaries by far are the United States, China and the European Union. Those regions host more than half of the world's most powerful data centers, which are used for developing the most complex AI systems, according to data compiled by Oxford University researchers. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. Singapore July BTO launch to have over 4,600 balance flats, 2 BTO projects with under than 3-year wait Business US tariffs may last well after Trump; crucial for countries to deepen trade ties: SM Lee Asia Indonesia police detain 12 suspects over baby trafficking ring linked to Singapore Singapore 'Kpods broke our marriage, shattered our children': Woman on husband's vape addiction Singapore Las Vegas Sands' new development part of S'pore's broader, more ambitious transformation: PM Wong Multimedia Telling the Singapore story for 180 years Life Walking for exercise? Here are tips on how to do it properly Singapore 'Nobody deserves to be alone': Why Mummy and Acha have fostered over 20 children in the past 22 years Only 32 countries, or about 16 per cent of nations, have these large facilities filled with microchips and computers, giving them what is known in industry parlance as 'compute power'. The United States and China , which dominate the tech world, have particular influence. US and Chinese companies operate more than 90 per cent of the data centres that other companies and institutions use for AI work, according to the Oxford data and other research. In contrast, Africa and South America have almost no AI computing hubs, while India has at least five and Japan at least four, according to the Oxford data. More than 150 countries have nothing. Today's AI data centers dwarf their predecessors, which powered simpler tasks like email and video streaming. Vast, power-hungry and packed with powerful chips, these hubs cost billions to build and require infrastructure that not every country can provide. With ownership concentrated among a few tech giants, the effects of the gap between those with such computing power and those without it are already playing out. The world's most used AI systems, which power chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT, are more proficient and accurate in English and Chinese, languages spoken in the countries where the compute power is concentrated. Tech giants with access to the top equipment are using AI to process data, automate tasks and develop new services. Scientific breakthroughs, including drug discovery and gene editing, rely on powerful computers. AI-powered weapons are making their way onto battlefields. Nations with little or no AI compute power are running into limits in scientific work, in the growth of young companies and in talent retention. Some officials have become alarmed by how the need for computing resources has made them beholden to foreign corporations and governments. 'Oil-producing countries have had an oversized influence on international affairs; in an AI-powered near future, compute producers could have something similar, since they control access to a critical resource,' said Professor Vili Lehdonvirta, an Oxford professor who conducted the research on AI data centres with his colleagues Zoe Jay Hawkins and Boxi Wu. AI computing power is so precious that the components in data centers, such as microchips, have become a crucial part of foreign and trade policies for China and the United States, which are jockeying for influence in the Persian Gulf, South-east Asia and elsewhere. At the same time, some countries are beginning to pour public funds into AI infrastructure, aiming for more control over their technological futures. The Oxford researchers mapped the world's AI data centers, information that companies and governments often keep secret. To create a representative sample, they went through the customer websites of nine of the world's biggest cloud service providers to see what compute power was available and where their hubs were at the end of 2024. The companies were the US firms Amazon, Google and Microsoft; China's Tencent, Alibaba and Huawei; and Europe's Exoscale, Hetzner and OVHcloud. The research does not include every data center worldwide, but the trends were unmistakable. US companies operated 87 AI computing hubs, which can sometimes include multiple data centres, or almost two-thirds of the global total, compared with 39 operated by Chinese firms and six by Europeans, according to the research. Inside the data centres, most of the chips – the foundational components for making calculations – were from US chipmaker Nvidia. 'We have a computing divide at the heart of the AI revolution,' said Mr Lacina Koné, the director general of Smart Africa, which coordinates digital policy across the continent. He added, 'It's not merely a hardware problem. It's the sovereignty of our digital future.' 'Sometimes I want to cry' There has long been a tech gap between rich and developing countries. Over the past decade, cheap smartphones, expanding internet coverage and flourishing app-based businesses led some experts to conclude that the divide was diminishing. In 2024, 68 per cent of the world's population used the internet, up from 33 per cent in 2012, according to the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency. With a computer and knowledge of coding, getting a company off the ground became cheaper and easier. That lifted tech industries across the world, be they mobile payments in Africa or ride hailing in Southeast Asia. But in April, the UN warned that the digital gap would widen without action on AI. Just 100 companies, mostly in the United States and China, were behind 40 per cent of global investment in the technology, the UN said. The biggest tech companies, it added, were 'gaining control over the technology's future.' The gap stems partly from a component everyone wants: a microchip known as a graphics processing unit, or GPU. The chips require multibillion-dollar factories to produce. Packed into data centres by the thousands and mostly made by Nvidia , GPUs provide the computing power for creating and delivering cutting-edge AI models. Obtaining these pieces of silicon is difficult. As demand has increased, prices for the chips have soared, and everyone wants to be at the front of the line for orders. Adding to the challenges, these chips then need to be corralled into giant data centers that guzzle up dizzying amounts of power and water. Many wealthy nations have access to the chips in data centres, but other countries are being left behind, according to interviews with more than two dozen tech executives and experts across 20 countries. Renting computing power from faraway data centres is common but can lead to challenges, including high costs, slower connection speeds, compliance with different laws, and vulnerability to the whims of US and Chinese companies. Qhala, a startup in Kenya, illustrates the issues. The company, founded by a former Google engineer, is building an AI system known as a large language model that is based on African languages. But Qhala has no nearby computing power and rents from data centres outside Africa. Employees cram their work into the morning, when most American programmers are sleeping, so there is less traffic and faster speeds to transfer data across the world. 'Proximity is essential,' said Dr Shikoh Gitau, 44, Qhala's founder. 'If you don't have the resources for compute to process the data and to build your AI models, then you can't go anywhere,' said Ms Kate Kallot, a former Nvidia executive and the founder of Amini, another AI startup in Kenya. In the United States, by contrast, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta and OpenAI have pledged to spend more than US$300 billion in 2025, much of it on AI infrastructure . The expenditure approaches Canada's national budget. Harvard University's Kempner Institute, which focuses on AI, has more computing power than all African-owned facilities on that continent combined, according to one survey of the world's largest supercomputers. Mr Brad Smith, Microsoft's president, said many countries wanted more computing infrastructure as a form of sovereignty. But closing the gap will be difficult, particularly in Africa, where many places do not have reliable electricity, he said. Microsoft, which is building a data centre in Kenya with a company in the United Arab Emirates, G42, chooses data centre locations based largely on market need, electricity and skilled labour. 'The AI era runs the risk of leaving Africa even further behind,' Mr Smith said. Mr Jay Puri, Nvidia's executive vice president for global business, said the company was also working with various countries to build out their AI offerings. 'It is absolutely a challenge,' he said. Mr Chris Lehane, OpenAI's vice-president of global affairs, said the company had started a program to adapt its products for local needs and languages. A risk of the AI divide, he said, is that 'the benefits don't get broadly distributed, they don't get democratised'. Tencent, Alibaba, Huawei, Google, Amazon, Hetzner and OVHcloud declined to comment. The gap has led to brain drains. In Argentina, Professor Wolovick, 51, the computer science professor, cannot offer much compute power. His top students regularly leave for the United States or Europe, where they can get access to GPUs, he said. 'Sometimes I want to cry, but I don't give up,' he said. 'I keep talking to people and saying, 'I need more GPUs. I need more GPUs.'' If you build it Alarmed by the concentration of AI power, many countries and regions are trying to close the gap. They are providing access to land and cheaper energy, fast-tracking development permits and using public funds and other resources to acquire chips and construct data centers. The goal is to create 'sovereign AI' available to local businesses and institutions. In India, the government is subsidising compute power and the creation of an AI model proficient in the country's languages. In Africa, governments are discussing collaborating on regional compute hubs. Brazil has pledged US$4 billion on AI projects. 'Instead of waiting for AI to come from China, the US, South Korea, Japan, why not have our own?' Brazil's president, Mr Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said in 2024 when he proposed the investment plan. Even in Europe, there is growing concern that US companies control most of the data centres. In February, the European Union outlined plans to invest €200 billion (S$298 billion) for AI projects, including new data centres across the 27-nation bloc. Mr Mathias Nobauer, the CEO of Exoscale, a cloud computing provider in Switzerland, said many European businesses want to reduce their reliance on US tech companies. Such a change will take time and 'doesn't happen overnight', he said. Still, closing the divide is likely to require help from the United States or China. NYTIMES
Straits Times
an hour ago
- Straits Times
EU asset manager Amundi launches new fund in S'pore that tracks Straits Times Index
Find out what's new on ST website and app. The Amundi Singapore Straits Times will be the first unit-trust-based index fund tracking the STI by a global asset manager. SINGAPORE – European asset manager Amundi is launching a fund that tracks Singapore's benchmark Straits Times Index (STI) with investment platform Endowus. The Amundi Singapore Straits Times will be the first unit-trust-based index fund tracking the STI by a global asset manager in Singapore, both companies announced on July 16. The fund also commemorates SG60, a celebration of Singapore's independence and transformation into a global economic powerhouse, they added. The STI is a benchmark of Singapore's established listed companies. It has been hitting new highs, with an intraday high of 4,129.8 points reached on July 15. In 2024, it delivered total returns of 24.3 per cent – its best performance in a decade. 'Through the fund, investors can participate and grow alongside Singapore's ongoing growth story in a low-cost, meaningful way,' the companies said. Two other exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in Singapore already track the STI – the SPDR Straits Times Index ETF and the Nikko AM Singapore STI ETF. The three funds aim to replicate as closely as possible, before expenses, the performance of the STI. The SPDR Straits Times Index ETF was listed in 2002. Between Jan 1, 2020, and July 14, 2025, its assets under management increased by 131 per cent to $1.92 billion. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. Singapore July BTO launch to have over 4,600 balance flats, 2 BTO projects with less than 3 year wait times Business US tariffs may last well after Trump; crucial for countries to deepen trade ties: SM Lee Asia Indonesia police detain 12 suspects over baby trafficking ring linked to Singapore Singapore 'Kpods broke our marriage, shattered our children': Woman on husband's vape addiction Singapore Las Vegas Sands' new development part of S'pore's broader, more ambitious transformation: PM Wong Multimedia Telling the Singapore story for 180 years Life Walking for exercise? Here are tips on how to do it properly Singapore 'Nobody deserves to be alone': Why Mummy and Acha have fostered over 20 children in the past 22 years The Nikko AM Singapore STI ETF was listed in 2009. Between Jan 1, 2020, and July 14, 2025, its assets under management increased by 195 per cent to $973 million. Amundi South Asia chief executive Albert Tse said: 'We are proud to be the first global asset manager since the global financial crisis to launch a fund of this nature, leveraging our longstanding expertise in indexing solutions and trusted partnership with a home-grown financial platform like Endowus to deliver this to Singapore investors for SG60.' The STI has historically offered dividend yields relatively higher than regional bourses, the companies added. The STI also has historically offered lower volatility than global equity benchmarks, 'driven by Singapore's robust banking, real estate, telecommunications, and industrial sectors', they said. 'Amid global volatility, Singapore's equity market has been a pillar of stability.' Over the 18-year period from January 2008 to June 2025, the STI maintained an average dividend yield of 3.77 per cent, with yields generally between 3 per cent and 5 per cent. 'This positions the fund as an option for investors seeking stable income or defensiveness while maintaining exposure to the long-term growth potential of Singapore's economy,' the two companies said. The fund will be available exclusively on the Endowus platform at an all-in-one fee under an institutional share class. It also has no sales charge, and offers an option for investors wanting growth with relatively lowered volatility. The collaboration combines Amundi's global investment expertise in ETFs and index management with Endowus' digital-first platform. The launch of the fund comes amid efforts to boost the local equities market, with the Equities Market Review Group launched in 2024 to facilitate product offerings and improve liquidity, among other measures. 'The fund complements these by attracting additional capital to benefit local enterprises,' the companies said. Endowus chairman and chief investment officer Samuel Rhee said: 'As a home-grown brand, Endowus is proud to play a role in deepening financial access and supporting the aspirations of Singaporeans through every stage of their wealth journey. 'Investing in Singapore's most established companies is, in many ways, investing in the nation's continued prosperity.' SGX group head of securities trading Serene Cai said the growing interest in the STI reflects the resilience and relevance of Singapore's equity market as a core allocation. 'With close to $3 billion of listed assets tracking the STI today, the index continues to demonstrate its strength as a trusted benchmark – offering institutional and retail investors diversified exposure to Singapore's leading companies and delivering consistent performance over time,' she said. SPH Media editor-in-chief of the English/Malay/Tamil Media group Wong Wei Kong said: 'Even as Singapore commemorates 60 years of independence and The Straits Times celebrates 180 years this year, the STI will be looking forward to being 60 next year. It is truly an integral part of the nation's economic, business and market development.'
Business Times
an hour ago
- Business Times
European asset manager Amundi, Endowus launch low-cost index fund tracking STI
[SINGAPORE] European asset manager Amundi and wealth adviser and investment platform Endowus on Wednesday (Jul 16) launched the Amundi Singapore Straits Times Index (STI) Fund. This marks the first unit-trust-based index fund tracking the STI by a global asset manager in Singapore. It will be available exclusively on the Endowus platform, at an all-in-one fee under an institutional share class. However, retail investors can also buy into the fund, according to Endowus. 'With no sales charges and low management fees, the fund offers another option for investors seeking growth with relatively lowered volatility compared to usual equity markets in their wealth journey,' noted the statement. The Amundi Singapore STI fund has a total expense ratio of 0.15 per cent, to further expand the low-cost indexing investment solutions available for STI investors, said Albert Tse, CEO Amundi South Asia. The fund does not incur additional trading costs, brokerage fees and exchange-traded expenses, Tse added. BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up It aims to replicate the performance of the STI, which is driven by Singapore's banking, real estate, telecommunications and industrial sectors. In 2024, the STI delivered total returns of 24.3 per cent, achieving its best performance in a decade, both Amundi and Endowus noted. The index maintained an average dividend yield of around 3.8 per cent over the 18-year period from January 2008 to June this year, with yields generally between 3 and 5 per cent. This positions the fund as an option for investors seeking stable income or defensiveness, while maintaining exposure to the long-term growth potential of Singapore's economy, they noted. Other ETFs on the Singapore Exchange which track the STI include the Nikko AM Singapore STI ETF managed by Nikko Asset Management Asia, and the SPDR STI ETF managed by State Street Global Advisors Singapore. The launch of the Amundi Singapore STI Fund also aligns with broader efforts by the Monetary Authority of Singapore to strengthen the local equities market. It is designed to complement various policy initiatives and incentives by attracting additional capital to benefit local enterprises, the release said. Albert Tse, chief executive of Amundi South Asia, said: 'We are proud to be the first global asset manager since the global financial crisis to launch a fund of this nature, leveraging our longstanding expertise in indexing solutions and trusted partnership with a home-grown financial platform like Endowus to deliver this to Singapore investors for SG60.' Wong Wei Kong, editor-in-chief of the English, Malay and Tamil Media Group at SPH Media, said: 'We're delighted that the Straits Times Index will be the benchmark for Amundi's innovative new fund. As the STI looks forward to being 60 next year, it is truly an integral part of the nation's economic, business and market development.'
