Peter Thal Larsen

@petertl.bsky.social

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Global Editor, Reuters Breakingviews. Usual disclaimers apply. My free weekly newsletter: https://www.reuters.com/newsletters/the-week-in-breakingviews/

The Lloyd's Remuneration Committee has written to Mr. Neal to inform him that, had he retained any unvested variable remuneration, his conduct would have warranted the cancellation of a portion of those awards. Mr. Neal forfeited his unvested compensation on resigning from Lloyd's.
Orange CEO Hans Snook selling to France Telecom
Nick Stern on The Big View
The stakes are high. A reversal of the artificial intelligence boom would hurt equity and debt markets around the world. (See Causes of correlation.) It would also dent American wealth: equities now account for 46% of household assets C, according to the Federal Reserve. At the peak of the dotcom boom in 2000 the figure was 39%. SpaceX buyers who this week watched their stock dip below the IPO price may feel some regret. A broader selloff could repeat the painful lessons from past stock market bubbles: small speculators tend to get sucked in during the boom, lose their shirts in the bust, and then retreat. The proportion of German households investing in stocks more than doubled to 20% of the population between 1997 and 2001 before falling back. That ratio is once again approaching its previous peak. Will retail investors fare better this time? Somehow, I doubt it.
The U.K. Gets Another New Leader on Monday. His First Task: Reassure the Markets. The former mayor of Manchester’s entry into Downing Street will mark the climax of a steep ascent for a politician who until last month wasn’t even a member of parliament.
In certain instances, investigators uncovered times when Perez would back out of certain bets mid-speech when Trump skipped over a portion of the speech that included a word he had previously bet would be mentioned, the sources said.
Chart of SpaceX’s share price on July 15
this quarter. What played out was worse than our expectations, driven by a shortfall in our Z pertormance and the associated sotware stack, primarily in Transaction Processing. In the last few weeks of June, we saw clients shift their quarterly capex spend toward servers, storage, and memory purchases to secure supply-constrained infrastructure ahead of expected price increases. This dynamic impacted client buying patterns. While we anticipated some supply chain related impact in our expectations, we did not anticipate the magnitude of the capex reprioritization. In addition, clients were distracted with rapidly-evolving, industry-wide cybersecurity concerns in the quarter. These conditions require our teams to execute pertectly, and this quarter we taltered. We did not adapt and move quickly enough, and numerous large deals failed to close on the timelines we expected, driving the majority of our shortfall.
Yuval Atsmon on The Big View podcast
© Reuters The Week in Breakingviews Insights from Reuters global financial commentary team By Peter Thal Larsen, Global Editor Welcome back! The ceasefire in the Strait of Hormuz ended, but financial markets shrugged. Investors are more focused on artificial intelligence. What else should we be thinking about? Email me with your suggestions. (If this newsletter was forwarded to you, sign up here to get it in your inbox for free.) Note: Links in this newsletter require a Breakingviews subscription. Subscribe here for you or your team to get full access.
A line chart of projected free cash flow for Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Oracle
A line chart showing projected non-depreciation expenses as a percentage of revenue for Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Oracle
A line chart of projected revenue for Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Oracle
A line chart of forecast capex and depreciation & amortisation as a percentage of combined sales for Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Oracle
Figurines with computers and smartphones are seen in front of the words "Artificial Intelligence AI" in this illustration taken, February 19, 2024. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Fiona Hill, Trump’s top Russia adviser in his first term and now a co-author of the British report, was skeptical about Washington’s staying power. She shared her thoughts with Carney, who had served with her on Harvard’s Board of Overseers. Trump, argued Hill, was America’s answer to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, weakening a superpower he meant to strengthen. She failed to move Starmer’s team, who put the report through months of edits to reaffirm the importance of U.S. ties.
Jack Daniel's Tennessee Blackberry
Benoit Bazin on The Big View
Comcast Announces Plans to Separate Media and Technology Businesses into Two Leading Public Companies Key Takeaways Creation of independent Comcast and NBCUniversal positions both companies for enhanced strategic focus, agility and value creation. NBCUniversal is a premier global media and entertainment company anchored by leading theme park, film, television and streaming assets. Tax-free spin-off of media businesses expected to be completed in approximately one year.
BT, Verizon join forces to create $4 billion international joint venture By Reuters June 29, 20267:03 AM GMT+1Updated 39 mins ago June 29 (Reuters) - BT (BT.L), opens new tab and Verizon (VZ.N), opens new tab on Monday announced a ​deal to combine their international enterprise operations ‌into a 50:50 joint venture, focussing on serving multinational clients and bringing together $4 billion in combined ​annual revenue. Verizon has agreed to pay BT ​an equalisation payment of $625 million, and both ⁠companies will hold equal voting rights ​in the new venture, which will serve more ​than 3,000 customers in over 180 countries.
Uber surge pricing in action
Tim Robbins in the rain
Once AI worms its way into special effects and beyond, it will be hard to stop. The fully AI-generated movie "Hell Grind" may only appeal to a small audience: its three-minute trailer, opens new tab is a compendium of clichés. Other initiatives are gaining credibility, though. "The House of David," a TV series on Amazon, openly touts, opens new tab its use of AI. Filmmaker Doug Liman is incorporating it, opens new tab into his movie “Bitcoin,” which will feature “versions” of tech bosses Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg while slashing production costs by roughly 65%, trade publication Deadline Hollywood reported.
Quinn Slobodian and Peter Thal Larsen on "The Big View"
SpaceX signs computing power deal with open-source AI startup Reflection worth up to $6.3 billion SpaceX has signed a major computing power deal with Reflection AI for access to Nvidia GB300 chips at Elon Musk’s Colossus 2 data center. The open-source AI startup will pay Musk’s company $150 million per month starting July 1, 2026, with payments totaling about $6.3 billion if the deal runs through 2029. The deal shows how SpaceX has turned Colossus into a commercial computing power platform, landing recent deals with Anthropic, Google and Cursor.
The reality is messier. The fine print of the financial statements show OpenAI has $665 billion of purchase commitments stretching out over the coming years for chips, energy and data centers. That’s because the company mostly rents computing capacity in other companies’ data centers, meaning it spends billions of dollars in leasing payments that flow through its income statement.
Musk’s hefty stake has lifted his wealth to $1.4 ‌trillion, according to Forbes, equivalent to more than 4% of U.S. GDP. Even the barons of the 19th-century Gilded Age, nicknamed for its rampant inequality, can hardly compare. Relative to the size of the economy, Musk's hoard is over twice as large as John D Rockefeller’s at his death ​in 1937. As with the Standard Oil founder, such an astonishing sum confers immense power.
Elon Musk Is Unleashing SpaceX’s New War Chest to Solve His AI Problem Buying AI coding agent Cursor and renting out data-center capacity will help company land more enterprise customers
Charles Goodhart and Manoj Pradhan on The Big View
Chart of Kalshi World Cup betting odds
Nvidia Kicks Off Its First Corporate Bond Offering in Five Years Nvidia Corp. is seeking to sell high-grade debt for the first time in about five years, extending a relentless wave of borrowing for companies spearheading the artificial intelligence boom. The chipmaker is marketing bonds in seven tranches, with maturities spanning two to 30 years, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Price talk on the longest tenor is a spread of about 0.9 percentage points above Treasuries, said the person, who asked not to be identified because they’re not authiorized to speak publicly.
My Parents by David Hockney
Chart of IPO returns plotted against reported oversubscription of the listing
Chart of World Cup ticket prices
Mariana Mazzucato appearing on The Big View
Not long after that championship, Fatkullin stopped entering aerobatics competitions: first came the pandemic, then the war with Russia. He moves through life impatiently. Now thirty-two, he has five children. He is tall, with a tight beard, pale-green eyes, and a square jaw. Even in casual situations, he stands ramrod straight, as though about to give or receive an order. He often wears a shirt with three buttons undone, a beige leather flying jacket with the collar turned up, combat pants, and Nike high-tops. He plays the guitar, a little piano. He often carries a thick fold of high-value bills. He speaks several languages, including English (almost perfectly) and Spanish (conversationally). He once spent thirty days in jail after breaking the ribs of a man who’d threatened his wife. (The case never reached trial.) He can dance the tango.
Claude Fable landing page
Matt's shares have dropped 79% in value since he bought them, for a loss of about $32,700. He keeps holding on, he said, because he thinks the stock is undervalued. "I call myself a loser, but I haven't given up yet," he said. He does not blame the Trump family. He said he believes Democrats and anti-Trump investors are taking short positions - a bet that an asset's price will fall - in the family's crypto projects. "Here's the dark side. I know all of these globalists have TDS and they are just going to short it," he said, using the acronym for "Trump Derangement Syndrome," the term Trump supporters use to describe what they see as an irrationally negative reaction to the president. He asked that his surname not be used to avoid politically charged blowback online and from people in his community.
REGRET, ANGER AND EMBARRASSMENT All but three of the 27 individual investors interviewed for this article said they knew of Donald Trump's history of bankruptcies, unpaid contractors and failed ventures. Still, most said they believed that his position at the apex of American political power and what they perceived as his business acumen ensured lucrative returns on their investments. Many acknowledged doing little or no due diligence. Some said they still hold on to the hope that Trump will make things right. Others expressed regret, anger and embarrassment. They range from a Minnesota software engineer who said he lost $60,000 of his savings to a hotel manager in Vietnam who lost years' worth of his income. They include the owner of an import-export business in Texas, a hospitality executive in Washington, D.C., and a retiree from New York.
FCA takes action against Neil Woodford and W4.0 for operating without authorisation The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has started civil proceedings against Mr Neil Woodford and W4.0. The FCA alleges that Mr Woodford and W4.0 are providing regulated investment advice and making financial promotions through the subscription-based platform, www.w4pz.com, without authorisation. In the FCA’s view, the activity breaches sections 19 and 21 of the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 (FSMA). The FCA is seeking an injunction against Mr Woodford and W4.0 to stop them carrying on the potentially unlawful activities. W4.0 is the trading name of W Four Point Zero FZE LLC and is registered in the United Arab Emirates.
RTRS - Banco BPM says proposed deal would be carried out as merger of equals RTRS - Italy's Banco BPM proposes to Bank MPS they discuss and agree on a merger deal - statement
How crazy could it get? To protect gross margins based on memory cost alone, we estimate like-for-like prices would need to rise ~34% for smartphones, ~67% for PCs, ~83% for servers and ~14% for storage. A 67% PC ASP increase would be the strongest in the market's history, 8-9x larger than even COVID-era inflation. Nobody passes all of this through, which is why it surfaces instead as margin pressure, spec cuts and delayed launches.
Agentic Al spurred a boom in mobile app releases, but there is no sign of these apps gaining traction Relative change in monthly volumes of iOS app releases and reviews (2024 average = 100) 180 Agentic Al App releases 160 140 120 100 80 2023 2024 2025 • Apps with - significant usage App reviews 2026 Source: Writing Code vs. Shipping Code: Productivity Effects Across Generations of Al Coding Tools (Demirer at al, 2026) OFT FT graphic: John Burn-Murdoch / @jburnmurdoch
Proposed Methodology Changes Current Result IPO Seasoning Period to be reduced to six months from 12 months Initial public offerings should be traded on an eligible exchange for at least 12 months before being considered for addition to an index. pin-offs or in-specie distributions from existing onstituents are not required to have 12 months o trading prior to their inclusion in the S&P Composite 1500. Companies that migrate from an ineligible exchange, emerge from bankruptcy, are newly designated to be domiciled in the U.S. for index purposes by S&P Dow Jones Indices, or convert from an ineligible share or organizational type to an eligible type do not need to trade on an eligible U.S. exchange for 12 months before being considered for addition. No Change Investable Weight Factor (IWF) minimum is waived for MegaCap companies To be eligible for addition, a stock must have an IWF of at least 0.10. Companies passing the total company level market capitalization criteria are also required to lave a security level float-adjusted market apitalization (FMC) that is at least 50% of the respective index's total company level minimum market capitalization threshold. No Change Financial Viability exception for MegaCap companies S&P Composite 1500. Generally Accepted iccounting Principles (GAAP) net income from ontinuing operations must be positive tor • the most recent quarter, and • the sum of the most recent four consecutive quarters Rule Exceptions. Exceptions to the above criteria include: • Migrations from one S&P Composite 1500 index o another do not need to meet the financial viability, liquidity, or 50% of the respective index's total company level minimum market capitalization threshold criteria. • Companies that are spun-off from current S&F Composite 1500 constituents do not need to meet the outside addition criteria • Non-S&P Composite 1500 companies that acquire S&P Composite 1500 index constituents, but do not fully meet all of the eligibility criteria, may stil…
Jeremy Grantham Yes. And if you look at the capex, you’ll see that 2023 is a piker compared to 2024, ’25, ’26. It’s just escalated. So it stayed strong enough to kind of shock the system and make it feel like it was unexpectedly strong with corporate profits from the Mag-7, unexpectedly strong again. And that’s a powerful influence on the market. And now the question is, how much of that is permanent? How much of their P/E move is justified? But I think most importantly, how long can they maintain their profit margins? I have a very strong feeling on that. History says that two things are going on here, but the first one is that the Mag-7 used to represent really strong monopolies in seven different areas. They each control their field, Microsoft, Apple, Google, and so on. And now they’re all bracing to be the top dog in the same field. This is utterly different. The way to do really well for a long time, make fat profits, is to be a price setter, which is to say, have a monopoly. They were enormously helped by the way in the Justice Department’s attitude, and the administration’s attitude, to monopolies. They weren’t interested. So they were not stepping in like Teddy Roosevelt to break up the great Standard Oil. So these were not just local monopolies, they were often grand, global monopolies. And very nice it was too. And now suddenly they’re all stripping for action and they’re going to all pile in the ring to gather like some event on President Trump’s lawn. And the seven firms are not your average firms, they are ultimately aggressive. We have actually learned to develop a very sharp-edged form of capitalism, not unlike the late 19th century, where Standard Oil and so on went for the throat, and bullied the railroads into increasing the freight rates on their competitors and so I mean. I mean, really dirty pork. And we’ve gotten pretty sharp, sharp-edged. And these guys are the winners. They go for the throat, and they’ve learned to be the winner who takes al…
Jeremy Grantham talks to Peter Thal Larsen on The Big View podcast
SpaceX will reserve up to 5% of shares in its upcoming initial public offering for certain employees and friends and family of its executive officers, the company disclosed in an amended filing. The amount of Class A stock the company is setting aside for its directed share program is newly specified in the filing Monday. Space Exploration Technologies Corp. already had disclosed last month that participants on its so-called friends and family list will not be subject to a lockup restriction.
Bill Gates's employees have spent years carefully cultivating his image—down to keeping a custom-size mannequin to test his outfits for different days of the week. A styling group stores troves of neutral tone crew and V-neck sweaters, button-down shirts, slacks and extra pairs of the Silver Lining Opticians "Carbon" glasses at an offsite building, current and former employees said. Once options are selected for public-facing engagements, employees usually send three options for approval by senior staff. The goal: to depict someone calm and approachable, like Mister Rogers.
A bar chart of the number of encylicals published per pope
Picture of a Ferrari hoover
Almost a decade ago, my former colleague Rob Cox conjured up a memorable image to describe investors in Snap. The disappearing-message app had just made its stock market debut by selling securities which conferred no voting rights. Buyers of the 2017 offering, Rob argued, were effectively doing what no self-respecting person ever should: wear sweatpants in public. Sartorial standards have evolved since then. The athleisure craze has made it acceptable for people to wander around in exercise gear. Meanwhile, norms of corporate oversight have continued to plummet. Just look at the upcoming stock market listing of SpaceX, set to be the largest ever. Elon Musk's rockets-to-chatbots venture effectively rejects the idea that anyone buying its publicly listed shares should enjoy any rights at all. The firm's 280-page prospectus spells out the Tesla tycoon's extraordinary grip. Musk has near-total control through his ownership of a special class of stock that carries 10 times the votes of normal shares. He gets to appoint more than half the board and is the only person who can replace himself as chairman or CEO. SpaceX will not have a majority of independent directors, while incorporating in Texas insulates the company from unwanted takeovers, proxy contests, and lawsuits. All this for an entrepreneur whose grandiose claims are, as Rob Cyran points out, at odds with financial reality.