Squawk Box Europe Express

Friedrich Merz is to become Germany’s next chancellor with the CDU taking 28.6% of the vote. The outgoing SPD crashed to its worst defeat in more than a century. The AfD doubles its votes to come in second and maintains it could still work in a coalition despite the German ‘firewall’ strategy. The hopes of German political stability boosts the euro. And on the three-year anniversary of Russia’s fu...

Standard Chartered announces it is launching a $1.5bn share buyback after missing Q4 bottom line expectations. The U.S. administration has reportedly refused to call Russia an ‘aggressor’ in a key communiqué following a week of difficult exchanges between U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy. We speak exclusively to former Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba...

Asian equities are in the red following a unsettled session on Wall Street as the Federal Reserve waits on more information about President Trump’s policies and the inflation forecast before moving to cut rates once more. President Trump slams Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy, accusing him of duping the previous U.S. administration and of misusing military funds sent to the country. In avia...

President Trump is eyeing increased tariffs of 25 per cent on imports of cars, drugs and semi-conductors and he announced he would provide further details in April. Ukraine peace talks between the U.S. and Russia end in Riyadh with both sides pledging increased cooperation. President Trump slams Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskyy’s call to be included in negotiations. In banking news, Europe’...

European allies are divided over a potential peace-keeping mission to Ukraine as U.S. and Russian officials meet in Saudi Arabia to discuss ending the conflict. We hear from French finance minister Eric Lombard who challenges Brussels to “get its act together” in the face of the new Trump administration. In Hong Kong, Chinese tech stocks continue their bullish run nudging the Hang Seng Tech Index...

The U.S. is set for Ukraine peace talks with Russia while President Macron calls for an emergency summit of European powers in Paris. We hear from the German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock at the Munich Security Conference who says the West must step up to the plate and demonstrate unity on the war in Ukraine. Her comments follow U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s speech on the ‘retreat’ of Europe...

President Donald Trump has announced he is launching reciprocal tariffs against all U.S. trading partners which would be calculated on a country-by-country basis and would take both tariff and non-tariff barriers into account. U.S. markets have so far shrugged off the latest tariff threats while wholesale inflation shows signs of slowing. Europe’s largest lender, HSBC, is due to announce a new rou...

Elon Musk has urged the U.S. government to scrap entire agencies to save up to $1tn as part of his DOGE bureaucracy revision. Markets are spooked after a hotter-than-expected U.S. inflation print with the 10-year Treasury yield nudging past 4.6 per cent. We hear from billionaire investor Ray Dalio who says he is concerned over inflated asset prices coupled with the threat of rising rates. Presiden...

U.S. President Donald Trump orders government agencies to work with Elon Musk’s Department Of Government Efficiency to make cut-backs. Musk slams critics of the project and says the American electorate has voted for the reforms. We are live in Paris at the AI Action Summit where the U.S. and UK have refused to sign up to an official communiqué as differences over regulation and governance continue...

UniCredit posts a record-breaking year and its 16th straight quarter of growth, as net profit comes in just shy of 10 billion euros despite more than 1 billion in extraordinary charges. CNBC spoke exclusively to CEO Andrea Orcel on the company’s earnings and Italian banking consolidation. U.S. President Donald Trump signs off a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum imports – and warns of further t...

U.S. President Donald Trump adds a new front to his trade war, as he threatened 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports, and promises further “reciprocal” levies in the coming days. Meanwhile Chinese retaliatory tariffs on around 14 billion dollars’ worth of U.S. goods take effect, while fresh data shows a pickup in consumer inflation in the world’s second largest economy. In Germany, Chance...

Amazon shares slip to the downside as the tech giant issues lower-than-expected guidance for the current quarter, but talks up its capex plans with spending to hit 100 billion dollars this year. Europe’s STOXX 600 closes at an all-time high, lifted by upbeat earnings as attention turns to today’s U.S. jobs report. Meanwhile, the Bank of England cuts by a quarter point, as it halves its growth fore...

Chip manufacturers Qualcomm and Arm both top Q4 expectations after the bell but A.I. capex concerns push shares down. The Nissan-Honda merger is reportedly in jeopardy as Nissan shareholders’ “growing differences” could now potentially lead to the $58bn deal being scrapped. Société Générale enjoys a doubling of Q4 profits helped by a rebound in its retail banking arm. The French lender’s FY revenu...

U.S. President Trump hosts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House and announces potential plans to ‘take over’ Gaza and redevelop the territory. Chinese markets re-open after a week-long holiday and trim gains after Beijing’s swift retaliation against U.S. tariff increases prompts investors to cut risks. In tech news, investors prove wary of Alphabet’s A.I. $75bn investment i...

China retaliates against U.S. trade restrictions, slapping duties onto wide-ranging U.S. imports. President Trump agrees to suspend tariffs with Canada and Mexico for after Ottawa and Mexico City vowed to strengthen border security to stamp out illegal immigration and drug smuggling. Swiss lender UBS posts a $770m Q4 net profit beat and confirms its guidance. And there are also earnings due in fro...

President Trump triggers a trade war which sends the dollar soaring and pushed Asian equities into the red. Mexico and Canada are hit with 25 per cent while Chinese goods are subject to a 10 per cent surcharge on existing tariffs. Trump has threatened that the EU could be targeted next. Both Canada and Mexico have vowed to retaliate. In M&A news, Italy’s Unicredit has disclosed a new stake in...

Apple shares soar more than 3 per cent in after-hours trade boosted by strong revenue from services. However, iPhone sales disappoint, dragged down by poor Chinese demand. Canadian and Mexican imports into the U.S. will be hit with 25 per cent tariffs from tomorrow but President Trump says he is still undecided whether the measures will affect oil. The ECB slashes euro interest rates by 25bps. It’...

Tesla Q4 results miss estimates with shares falling and then rebounding in after-hours trade. However, CEO Elon Musk remains bullish about the year ahead pointing to advancements in A.I. and self-driving technology. Microsoft sees disappointing cloud sector revenue while Facebook owner Meta beats Q4 expectations despite softer-than-expected forecasts. The U.S. Federal Reserve maintains rates in Ja...

Dutch chip equipment ASML moves to calm investor jitters over AI plans, beating Q4 expectations with net income of €2.69bn. Nvidia shares have slowly rebounded following Monday’s DeepSeek-driven bloodbath, ending yesterday’s session almost 9 per cent higher. Other U.S. tech stocks have also clawed back losses as retail investors re-enter the sector following this week’s massive sell-off. UK Chance...

Nvidia’s market cap takes a $600bn battering – the biggest one-day Wall Street wipe-out in history. The emergence of DeepSeek sees $1tn knocked off big tech stocks amid a market panic reverberating in Japan and in European AI-related shares. In Germany, Siemens attempts to stem losses from the sell-off with preliminary Q1 revenue narrowly beats forecasts at €9bn. German cloud-computing giant SAP b...

Thousands of displaced Gazans begin to return to their homes in the north of the Gaza Strip as the fragile ceasefire continues to hold. U.S. President Trump has proposed rehousing Palestinians from the Gaza Strip in neighbouring Arab nations to ‘clean out’ the demolished territory. Trump has also spoken to Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, once again pushing for U.S. control of Greenland. W...

President Trump calls for interests rates to be slashed immediately, helping to push the S&P 500 to a record high. The BoJ raises interest rates to their highest level since 2008 and indicates further hikes will follow. In a video address to the World Economic Forum, President Trump slams the EU for its treatment of the U.S. We hear from the European Commission’s EVP for Prosperity and Industr...

Tesla CEO Elon Musk pours cold water on President Trump’s A.I. mega-project Stargate, saying Softbank, Oracle and OpenAI ‘don’t actually have the money’ to realise the plan but Sam Altman hits back asking Musk to put the country’s interests first. Meanwhile at Davos, President Trump’s tariff threats loom large ahead of his special video address to the World Economic Forum later today. Trump h...

President Trump announces a ‘monumental’ $500bn A.I. infrastructure project called Stargate, backed by OpenAI, Oracle and Japan’s Softbank. Netflix shares soar as price hikes and live events help the streaming giant post a huge beat on subscriber numbers. In Asian markets, Greater China stocks disappoint amid new threats of tariffs coming from the Trump administration while European indices are se...

Donald Trump is inaugurated as the 47th President of the United States, immediately signing off on a flurry of executive orders. He did, however, stop short of launching immediate tariffs on neighbours Canada, Mexico as well as on China. Trump did sign a 75-day reprieve on the ban on TikTok in order to review a deal for the platform. He also signed orders to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris C...