It’s only appropriate that just hours after we published an extensive report looking at the trillions in debt funding the AI supercycle – which just this year stands at $568bn, of which $259bn issued in IG, followed by $256bn across Private Credit, Direct Lending, and other bilateral/non-syndicated lending (for SPVs and infrastructure finance), another $40bn for HY and $11bn for institutional loans…

… that SotBank launched what Bloomberg dubbed “one of the biggest junk bond deals ever”, as the Japanese conglomerate seeks the equivalent of more than $11 billion in high  yield debt as Masayoshi Son’s conglomerate ramps up its investments in ChatGPT creator OpenAI. 

If SoftBank sells about $11 billion in debt it would be one of the largest junk bond sales ever by a single firm, excluding distressed debt exchanges. The near-record offering would come in 5 tranches: the company is looking to issue $10 billion of dollar securities across three tenors, and €1 billion ($1.1 billion) of euro debt across two maturities, according to BBG sources.

The proceeds from the debt sale will be used to fund a follow-on investment in OpenAI expected to close next month as well as general corporate purposes; the deal is expected to price as soon as Thursday, depending on demand. 

One of the world’s largest investors in AI, SoftBank’s fortunes have become increasingly intertwined with its ability to monetize its holding in OpenAI after committing close to $65 billion to the tech pioneer. That’s put Son’s firm at the epicenter of debt-fueled bets on artificial intelligence, at a time when safety concerns about the industry have flared.

SoftBank and its lead banks are sounding out investors on potential pricing for the proposed junk bond sale, offering an early glimpse of roughly how much the conglomerate may pay for the deal. All discussions are early stage and figures could change.

The table below shows the indicative prices that SoftBank is feeling out with investors, though such initial price guidance has yet to be discussed and could wind up differing from these earlier discussions based on investor feedback:

Those yields would all be records for SoftBank in those specific currencies and tenors if priced at those levels, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, though details in corporate note offerings often change before they are actually priced.

As Bloomberg notes, the latest deal adds to a flurry of recent activity by SoftBank, as it builds out its artificial intelligence financing capacity. The conglomerate entered into a $40 billion bridge loan in March to fund an additional investment in OpenAI, and recently repaid the outstanding balance of $25.9 billion on that facility.

SoftBank closed out last week with nearly $21 billion in potential fresh borrowings. The group increased a margin loan backed by shares of its chip unit Arm Holdings by $5 billion to $25 billion, people familiar with the matter said on Friday. And it recently secured an additional $450 million to an existing credit line, bringing the total to $6.5 billion.

In short, if OpenAi goes down it is absolutely dragging SoftBank with it. 

Apollo Global is also in talks to boost the size of a loan to SoftBank by $3.6 billion to $9 billion to help it finance its investment in AI giant OpenAI. On top of that, the firm founded and led by billionaire Masayoshi Son secured an $11.87 billion loan, also to support its OpenAI investment. 

As part of its funding campaign this year, SoftBank has sold almost $15 billion of notes across currencies, making it the biggest junk-rated borrower in bond markets so far in 2026, Bloomberg-compiled data show. There was also a $10 billion loan earlier this year backed by its OpenAI stake.

The deals come amid a broader increase across markets in borrowing costs, as most major economies grapple with inflation. The yield on SoftBank’s dollar bond maturing in 2031 climbed to 8.2% earlier this month, up from as low as 6.7% in January, as spreads have blown out and underlying Treasury yields have risen.

Recent calls by heads of some of the world’s biggest artificial intelligence platforms, including OpenAI, to slow AI advances on safety concerns, have introduced another layer of uncertainty. That contributed recently to an increase in the cost to insure SoftBank’s debt against default to the highest in three years. 

In another hit to SoftBank, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s remarked that the company won’t go public this year – a move that would increase the liquidity of SoftBank’s investments – have been closely watched by investors.   

Citigroup Inc. is acting as the lead bookrunner and a joint global coordinator, alongside Goldman Sachs Group, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley for dollar tranches. JPMorgan is the lead bookrunner for the euro-denominated notes and among the joint global coordinators, together with Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank.

“The United States is working on a massive Deal with respect to the purchase of Potash from Belarus,” President Trump wrote on Truth Social just before 11 a.m. ET.

Trump continued, “The pricing would be for substantially less than we are currently paying to Canada, very good news for our Farmers and Ranchers.”

The immediate market impact: Intrepid Potash, CF Industries, and Mosaic shares fell to session lows.

Intrepid Potash: -4.6%

CF Industries: -3.5%

Mosaic: -4.5%

The move follows Trump slapping 50% tariffs on some Canadian goods last month after the US and Canada failed to reach a last-minute trade deal. However, the levies included significant exemptions for major Canadian imports such as oil, gas, and potash. 

However, earlier, Russian news agency Interfax quoted Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko as saying his country lacks the capacity to supply potash fertlizer to the West. 

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent emerged from roughly eight hours of talks with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in New York on Sunday calling the meeting “very successful,” with Washington and Beijing agreeing to new mechanisms covering trade and artificial intelligence just days before President Donald Trump hosts Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Washington.

The talks, held at JPMorgan Chase headquarters, were intended to lay the groundwork for the Trump-Xi summit later this week. Working-level discussions are continuing as the two sides try to lock down whatever can be agreed before the leaders meet.

On paper, the immediate deliverables were relatively modest. In practice, the timing is anything but.

The two sides agreed to establish a U.S.-China AI dialogue, with Washington proposing a notification mechanism for AI incidents serious enough to reach the national-security level. Bessent framed the concept as an effort to move the world’s two leading AI powers from opacity toward greater transparency and establish some common understanding of threats.

As we noted Friday, artificial intelligence was already emerging as one of the summit’s most consequential issues, sitting alongside trade, semiconductors, Taiwan and rare earths. The two governments also moved to operationalize the previously proposed Board of Trade. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said negotiators are looking for baskets of “non-sensitive” goods that could potentially be treated separately from future trade restrictions. Washington is considering lower-tech Chinese consumer goods, while Beijing is looking at U.S. energy, agricultural products and potentially medical devices.

There was no announced breakthrough, however, on some of the much larger outstanding disputes, including Chinese rare-earth flows, additional purchases of U.S. agricultural goods or Boeing aircraft. Advanced AI-chip export restrictions were also not part of Sunday’s AI discussion.

Perhaps more revealing was how little Beijing itself said about AI. Xinhua described the talks as “candid, in-depth and constructive” before relegating the subject to the final sentence of its brief readout: “They also held dialogues on AI-related issues.”

Chinese state media Xinhua has a very brief report on the Bessent and He Lifeng meeting in New York.

AI only mentioned in last line: “They also held dialogues on AI-related issues.” pic.twitter.com/HsUQmdujJ3

— Kyle Chan (@kyleichan) September 21, 2026

But Xi is also heading to Washington against a considerably different geopolitical backdrop than the one surrounding Trump’s May visit to Beijing.

For starters, two of China’s most attractive sources of discounted crude have been sharply constrained. Venezuela had become an important supplier of cheap heavy crude to Chinese refiners, but those flows fell dramatically after Washington’s intervention in the country’s oil trade earlier this year. As we noted at the time, Chinese refiners initially compensated by increasing purchases of heavily discounted Iranian barrels.

Meanwhile, the renewed U.S. campaign against Iran’s oil exports disrupted shipments to Asia and left tens of millions of barrels in transit or floating storage. As we reported in July, roughly 63 million barrels of Iranian crude were at one point either moving or idling aboard tankers as sanctions pressure intensified. That does not mean China is running out of oil. Beijing accumulated large inventories and can source replacement barrels elsewhere, but the combination of reduced Venezuelan flows and disrupted Iranian supply has diminished some of the cheap-energy advantage Chinese refiners previously enjoyed.

Russia can fill part of that gap, but its own energy infrastructure remains under pressure from Ukrainian long-range attacks on refineries, export terminals and storage facilities. Earlier this month, Goldman estimated that the attacks had taken roughly 300,000 barrels per day of Russian refining capacity offline during August and early September. China has also encountered setbacks around another strategic chokepoint. Panama’s Supreme Court voided Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison’s concessions to operate the Balboa and Cristobal ports at opposite ends of the Panama Canal. As we noted in January, the ruling stripped the legal basis from a China-linked operator at two port facilities adjoining one of the world’s most important shipping routes.

Then there is Greenland. Washington announced Friday that it had reached a security agreement intended to guarantee a long-term U.S. role on the island while preventing Russia, China and other non-NATO countries from establishing military bases there. The arrangement would strengthen the U.S. position in an Arctic region that both Washington and Beijing increasingly view as strategically important. On Monday, Denmark confirmed that the Trump-Greenland deal would boost arctic security. 

The political landscape across parts of Latin America has shifted as well. Reuters described Colombia’s June election of Abelardo De La Espriella as part of a broader regional movement to the right that has also included Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Bolivia, Panama and Peru.

Brazil is now the major unresolved contest. As we noted last week, Polymarket pricing recently moved in favor of Senator Flavio Bolsonaro over President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Prediction-market prices are not opinion polls, however, and Monday’s BTG Pactual/Nexus survey showed Lula at 46% and Bolsonaro at 45% in a hypothetical runoff, within the survey’s margin of error.

Markets, meanwhile, entered the weekend already showing signs of pressure. According to Newsquawk, the U.S. 10-year Treasury yield closed Friday 6.5bps higher at 5.004%, while the two-year rose 7.5bps to 4.745%, producing a modest bear flattening of the curve.

Yet Xi is hardly arriving in Washington without leverage of his own.

China still controls roughly 70% of global rare-earth mining and more than 85% of refining capacity, leaving Beijing with substantial influence over supply chains critical to U.S. autos, semiconductors, aerospace and defense. As we noted this weekend, disrupted Chinese yttrium shipments alone have already forced Western aerospace, energy and semiconductor companies to scramble for alternatives. Beijing also retains enormous manufacturing capacity, large accumulated energy inventories and considerable purchasing power over everything from American agricultural commodities to aircraft.

In other words, Thursday’s summit is taking shape less as a grand reconciliation than an attempt by two heavily intertwined rivals to fence off portions of the relationship before the next confrontation.

Washington arrives with greater influence over Venezuelan oil flows, intensified pressure on Iran’s exports, a strengthened strategic position around Greenland and reduced China-linked influence around the Panama Canal, while the political map across portions of Latin America has changed considerably.

Beijing arrives with its own formidable counters: dominant critical-mineral supply chains, a resilient manufacturing and export base, substantial energy reserves and enormous leverage as a buyer of U.S. goods. Oh, and let’s not forget – open-weight AI models that have completely upended the frontier AI model. 

CNN, MS NOW and Politico notified the federal government on Monday that they intend to sue the Trump administration to get their White House credentials back, three days after the president announced from Truth Social that he was barring all three from the building.

The outlets have retained First Amendment lawyer Ted Boutrous, who beat the administration on this exact question in 2018, and are seeking emergency relief in federal district court in Washington.

The Ban

Trump announced the ban on Friday, writing that outlets “shouldn’t be able to constantly write or report FICTION and LIES when they’re covering the President.” He later added that “there’s something wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stuff.”

The order was enforced at the White House gates the next morning. On Saturday, journalists arriving to cover the administration were stopped by the Secret Service at the West Wing security checkpoints. CNN’s Betsy Klein, MS NOW’s Akayla Gardner and Politico’s Cheyenne Haslett were turned away; an agent told Gardner her press pass had been deactivated.

By Monday, CNN was removed from pooled coverage duties – the rotating assignment under which one network’s crew feeds video to every other outlet – and CNN and MS NOW were blocked from using their television equipment and camera positions on the grounds. 

On the pool itself: Fox News Washington bureau chief Bryan Boughton, who chairs the TV pool (ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC, Fox rotate), emailed pool subscribers that there would be “no replacement pool put in place” after the White House blocked CNN from its assigned duties. The other major networks declined to fill in. Essentially collective action by the networks, including Fox.

https://t.co/h78fUx200J pic.twitter.com/20CHMpdTw3

— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) September 18, 2026

Jacqui Heinrich, Fox News senior White House correspondent and current White House Correspondents’ Association president, issued the WHCA statement standing “in defense of our colleagues at CNN, MS NOW, and Politico who are being singled out for doing their jobs.” She said the action violates the First Amendment, that protections “do not depend on whether the president likes a news organization’s coverage,” and called for immediate restoration of access. She also discussed it on Fox News Sunday.

The Filing

In a joint statement, the three outlets said: “Without notice or process, the White House revoked our journalists’ credentials because it objected to our reporting.” They called the ban “a more direct assault on the First Amendment” than anything that preceded it, and “a more blatant violation of our most fundamental constitutional principles.”

All three said they would keep covering the administration either way. Politico global editor-in-chief Jonathan Greenberger told staff in a memo that the outlet would “vigorously defend our First Amendment rights.”

What The Courts Have Already Said

The administration has lost this argument twice before.

In 2018 the White House pulled the hard pass of CNN’s Jim Acosta after a hostile press conference. Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, ordered it restored within days, finding the network likely to win on Fifth Amendment due process – the White House had given Acosta no notice and no chance to respond.

In 2025 the administration barred the Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One after the wire service declined to adopt “Gulf of America.” A district judge ordered full access restored. An appeals court then let the administration keep the AP out of small, restricted spaces, ruling only that it could not bar reporters from areas “generally open to the press,” such as the briefing room.

Neither case went as far as this one. Acosta was one reporter and the AP kept its briefing-room seat. Three outlets barred from the entire complex is a larger question than any court has answered.

Update: (10:05am ET).

Well, that was fast: following a Friday leak that a settlement was imminent, moments ago, Bloomberg reported that Paramount Skydance has reached a settlement with California and other states suing to block its proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, citing a person familiar with the matter.

Settlement talks came to fruition over the weekend after four states that had opposed terms of a deal outlined with California conceded. The settlement, which is expected to be announced later today, paves the way for one of the largest mergers in Hollywood history.

Lawyers for the states worked all night on the agreement, the person said. Four states — Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut and Minnesota — had been holdouts on a possible settlement, but ultimately concluded the expense of the legal battle was not justifiable without California at the helm, the person said.

The states that held out longer did succeed over the past week in securing independent editorial boards for CBS and CNN as part of the deal, the person said.

The terms, summarized below, are said to include a financial penalty if the company fails to make good on a promise to distribute 30 films per year in theaters.

If the final terms are approved, the agreement would spare Paramount from having to pay late fees to Warner Bros. of $7 million a day, which were to begin on Oct. 1.

* * *

Earlier

Shares of Warner Bros. (WBD) are up 7% and Paramount Skydance (PSKY) gains 6% after the WSJ reported Friday that Paramount was in advanced settlement talks with the California AG Rob Bonta aimed at settling the California-led antitrust lawsuit that would block the company’s proposed merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.

According to the report the two sides met over the weekend and discussed several potential concessions including

• $1.5bn investment by Paramount for production in California
• Maintain both studio lots & stay in California
• Potential sale of cable channels and creation of a board to maintain CNN’s editorial independence
• Financial penalties for producing less than 30 films per year. 

Bonta, a consortium of 12 states, and the Writers Guild of America, sued to block Paramount’s $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. in July. Since then, the two sides have been locked in discussions to resolve the matter. The suing states fear further consolidation in the entertainment industry would reduce jobs and competition. Meanwhile, Paramount, led by CEO David Ellison, argues the combination will create a company large enough to successfully compete with the tech giants that have encroached on the entertainment industry.

The merger would bring the two eponymous Hollywood studios and under one roof, alongside the Paramount Plus and HBO Max streaming services and a slew of cable channels such as CNN, MTV, and TBS, among others.

One of the proposals in the negotiations includes establishing an oversight board to ensure CNN retains editorial independence. Other possibilities include the sale of certain cable channels, according to IBD

Another proposal would impose, according to Bloomberg, a $30 million fine on Paramount for each film that falls short of its previously pledged goal of releasing 30 movies per year in theaters. Ellison and Paramount originally made the pledge to get theater operators to support the merger. However, Bonta had been wary of Paramount’s promise because he considered it difficult to enforce. The fine would seem to address that.

Under the terms of the discussions, Paramount would also be forced to sell its stake in the studio Miramax, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Bitcoin has surged above $85,000 this morning for the first time since late-January…

The rally comes alongside advances in stocks and bonds, as falling oil prices and optimism ahead of a summit between US President Trump and China’s Xi Jinping are buoying markets more broadly. Rival digital assets have also bounced.

Ether, the second-largest token, has spiked up to almost $2750, while other cryptocurrencies including XRP, Solana and Monero also posted gains…

Bitcoin’s gains build upon a recovery that began late last week, when crypto absorbed the failure of the landmark Clarity Act (up around 14% since) to establish a clearer understanding of industry regulation as well the Fed’s first interest-rate increase in more than three years.

“Financial markets have rediscovered a risk-on frame of mind after being consumed with worry about government bond yields, debt piles and the prospect of a return to tighter policy at the world’s most powerful central bank,” said Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at investing and trading platform IG.

A green light on Thursday from the Securities and Exchange Commission for digital versions of securities to start trading in the US helped to brighten the mood. 

Interestingly, Bitcoin treasury founder and pioneer Michael Saylor has said that the blockage of the Clarity Act is actually good for the digital asset space. 

Writing on X on Saturday, the Strategy founder and chair said that legislation can make restrictions permanent just as easily as rights. 

The Digital Assets industry is better off moving forward with supportive rules from the SEC, CFTC, Treasury, and banking regulators than accepting the restrictions in the final CLARITY compromise. We have an administration willing to modernize financial markets. We should use the next two years to put better financial products into people’s hands.

Our safest path forward is to create products that delight customers and deploy them broadly. Lower costs, easier access, useful services, and greater control over money give people a direct interest in preserving innovation. The strongest constituency we can build is a public that benefits from what we create.

Legal certainty matters. So does the freedom to compete. A law can make a restriction durable just as easily as it can make a right durable. Before celebrating permanence, we should examine what we are making permanent.

The September CLARITY compromise would have restricted covered providers from paying customers simply for holding payment stablecoins, while allowing qualifying activity rewards. It also would have directed Treasury to restrict certain rewards upon specified findings of substantial, detrimental deposit transfers from community banks.

Protecting a bank from a liquidity crisis and protecting it from a better competitor are different objectives. Financial stability requires sound oversight. Competition requires that customers be free to choose a better service. When technology reduces the cost of delivering financial services, consumers should share in the savings.

Read more here…

Additionally, Saylor’s Strategy purchased Bitcoin for the first time in three weeks, acquiring $75.7 million of the original cryptocurrency after seeking to rebuild investor confidence by reshaping its balance sheet and building out reserves.

The original Bitcoin treasury company – co-founded and run by Saylor – also repurchased $174 million of its STRC perpetual preferred shares, part of its effort to lift the price above par so that the securities can be used again to finance future Bitcoin purchases. Cash was used to fund both transactions, Strategy said in a filing on Monday. The preferred trade just below $99.

Strategy is now (846,002) just 1363 BTC below its all time high holdings from June 22 when it was 847,365…

“The crypto market capitalization has risen to $2.8T, its highest level since the end of January this year,” said Alex Kuptsikevich, the FxPro chief market analyst.

“Although Friday’s rally was followed by increased selling pressure, buyers have once again been dominating the cryptocurrency market since Sunday.”

Bloomberg reports that bitcoin open interest on the options trading platform Deribit was heavily dominated by calls, signaling bullish sentiment. The platform showed more than 272,000 contracts for the right to buy the token compared with over 154,000 for puts, or the right to sell.

“Bitcoin options market is positioned to capture the upside,” said Pratik Kala, a portfolio manager at digital-asset hedge fund Apollo Crypto.

“People are repositioning from downside protection to wanting to capture the upside.”

But not all traders are convinced the momentum can last given the difficult macroeconomic headwinds, with crude oil still above $100 a barrel and US Treasury yields elevated.

Bitcoin is well off its 2026 high of over $97,000 in mid-January, and even further from its October record. Retail enthusiasm has also proven hard to rekindle as artificial intelligence stocks and other AI-linked trades compete for the same pool of speculative capital.

“For this week, there aren’t any big catalysts to watch out for per se, but any hawkish or dovish remarks by Fed officials could impact the market,” said Jeff Mei, chief operating officer of BTSE.

 Finally, we note that ETF inflows have re-accelerated…

Various investor cohorts also returned to aggregate profit, including Bitcoin corporate treasuries, holdings of which have a cost basis of around $80,500. Now, price is approaching its cost basis for investors in US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Per data by onchain analytics platform Glassnode, this cost basis currently sits at $85,638…

In a departure from the norm, the largest Bitcoin ETF, BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), did not account for the lion’s share of inflows. Instead, most investors piled into Fidelity Investments’ Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC), which accounted for $310 million of the total. In their analysis of recent market developments, the onchain analytics platform CryptoQuant discussed this change in ETF netflow composition. 

“The key change is therefore not simply positive ETF activity, but a clear redistribution of flow leadership: IBIT went from dominating FBTC by nearly six times on September 3 to FBTC recording almost three times IBIT’s holdings netflow on September 18,” CryptoQuant stated in a blog post.

After reacting positively to the announcement of US bond-market interventions in August, Bitcoin market participants continue to monitor any events surrounding yields. In a report for CME on Sept. 16, Jim Iuorio, CEO of JI Financial Strategies, argued that interventions may represent a liquidity tailwind for Bitcoin and crypto markets.

“Perhaps markets viewed these actions as being dollar-negative, pushing money back into dollar hedges like gold and Bitcoin,” he said.

Bloomberg reports that Almonty Industries has secured final administrative approval from South Korean authorities to commercially process tungsten at its Sangdong mine. The approval positions Sangdong to begin supplying major Western customers and accelerate supply chain decoupling from China for the critical industrial metal. As Beijing restricts tungsten exports, the West’s looming rearmament cycle adds urgency to securing conflict-free supplies.

South Korea granted Almonty inspection certificates last Thursday that authorize commercial operation of Sangdong’s processing plant and crushing facilities. The approvals allow Almonty to turn mined ore into saleable tungsten concentrate for domestic customers and, more importantly, for Western buyers struggling to procure supplies amid a year and a half of China choking off global supplies.

Much of the Sangdong mine’s output already has a buyer.

Almonty’s long-term offtake agreement with Global Tungsten & Powders, a member of Austria’s Plansee Group, covers more than 90% of Sangdong’s Phase I production. A news release in July announced an extension of the agreement to 21 years from first delivery and increased total contracted volume to 4.41 million metric tonne units (MTU), with minimum annual volumes of 210,000 MTU following ramp-up.

“With more than 90% of our Phase I production already contracted for 21 years from first delivery, the task in front of us is a simple one: operate the plant safely, ramp it steadily and deliver,” CEO Lewis Black wrote in a press release.

Almonty noted in the press release, “The certification is the final step in Sangdong’s transition from facility construction, trial operation and commissioning to commercial production.”

Black continued, “The timing is not lost on us. Tungsten prices are at historic highs, China has tightened its grip on the material the Western industrial base depends on, and commencing January 2027, United States defense procurement rules will look all the way back to where the ore was mined.”

“Sangdong is one of very few assets anywhere that can answer that question with a Western address and the scale to matter,” Black added.

In its most recent presentation, Almonty describes itself as becoming the leading Western tungsten producer following Sangdong’s Phase II expansion and an extension at Portugal’s operating Panasqueira mine.

Almonty is pursuing that higher-value processing opportunity through Sangdong with an initial annual capacity of 4,000 tons, later expanding to 6,000 tons.

Last week, Almonty struck a deal with Rwanda’s government, securing a foothold in Africa’s largest tungsten-producing nation, while the miner also tapped its Spanish mine waste. These two moves show the fastest way to bring new supplies online, since waiting years for a new mine conflicts with the need to address supply troubles today. In other words, the West doesn’t have time, and it needed new supplies yesterday.

Almonty shares have pulled back to around $14 after their latest rally stalled near $19. The stock remains roughly 40% below its April peak near $23.5 and has slipped into the $15 – $20 range.

In premarket shares are up 3.3%. 

Companies that can bring supply online sooner could capture a crucial early market advantage, such as Almonty, as it ramps up tungsten production at its South Korean mine and is now set to export to the West. 

President Trump continues to seek to pressure Ukraine’s Zelensky to halt long-range drone strikes on Russia’s refineries, in a bid to calm rising diesel prices especially while the parallel Strait of Hormuz crisis persists.

Financial Times reports Monday that the US president just held a fresh phone call with his Ukrainian counterpart over the matter, where Zelensky was pressed over the strikes as Washington wants “Russian supplies to be able to reach the global market to provide relief” – also as cited in Bloomberg. News of the call broke just before Trump issued the following Truth Social statement early Monday:

The Truth Social words seem geared toward deflecting criticism that he’s curtailing Ukraine’s ability to fight and inflict pain on Russia. Trump says the Kremlin has “lost control of its Diesel Oil Industry” as a result of the war with Ukraine.

The president had starting on Sept.13 called on Kiev to de-escalate the oil infrastructure attacks, which have become so frequent as to be happening multiple times a week.

Zelensky “has to do one thing. He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia,” Trump told reporters while in Ireland over a week ago. “There are plenty of other targets. Don’t hit diesel fuel, because that’s hurting, that’s hurting the world.”

Reuters in a fresh report observes: “Oil prices slid to their lowest in 11 days on Monday as investors ‌hoped for diplomatic progress on the Iran war due to this week’s UN meeting, and eyed a partial recovery in shipments from Saudi Arabia.” The Iranian president and his delegation have (somewhat surprisingly) been issued visas and are expected to be present in New York City this week.

The report continues, “Brent crude futures and US West Texas Intermediate crude touched their lowest since September 10 earlier on Monday. The Brent contract for November was at $101.75 a barrel at 0859 GMT, down $2.12, or 2%.”

We noted previously that the IEA indicated US diesel prices surpassed $200 per barrel in early September, which was 94 percent above their pre-war level. Diesel and other similar fuels account for nearly 30 percent of global oil demand.

On Sunday we reported Ukraine Pounds Major Moscow Refinery As Global Diesel Crisis Threatens Economic Shock – which involved Ukrainian drones pounding Gazprom Neft-owned Moscow Oil Refinery, about 16 miles from the Kremlin. The facility has a processing capacity of around 245,000 barrels a day and supplies fuel to the surrounding metro area.

Zelensky had then boasted on X, “One of Russia’s key oil industry facilities and the aggressor’s logistics facility were hit. These are billions of dollars that sustain the war machine. The systems used included FP-1, RZ-100, MICH-2000, Palianytsia, Vendetta, Liutyi, Bars, Flamingo, Sichen, and Pelican.”

Insane video of a Russian air defence system Pantsir being deployed right above Moscows busiest highway right next to an oil refinery. pic.twitter.com/q6XebQV0A6

— WarMonitor🇺🇦🇬🇧 (@WarMonitor3) September 21, 2026

It seems Trump will have an uphill battle trying to rein him in, especially given that European capitals may at the same time quietly be advising him the opposite. From Kiev’s point of view, Washington is seeking to hobble the one aspect of its war strategy that’s having a serious impact inside Russia.

Novo Nordisk shares tumbled as much as 7.7% in Copenhagen trading after Wall Street analysts questioned the Danish drugmaker’s turnaround efforts amid the loss of its GLP-1 lead to Eli Lilly & Co.

At its capital markets day earlier in London, Novo outlined plans for more than five blockbuster launches and over $23 billion in new sales in the coming years. But that comes as its obesity-market lead has been surrendered to Eli Lilly, and analysts were hoping for more commentary from management about turnaround efforts as the stock is down 18% on the year.

“Investors are selling the shares because they are not seeing concrete news that could drive the stock higher,” Nordnet investment economist Per Hansen wrote.

CEO Mike Doustdar told analysts, “We need to work harder, and we will.” However, much of the optimism from capital markets a few years ago about Novo leading the GLP-1 race has all but faded.

Much of Novo’s medium-term outlook rests on CagriSema, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Michael Shah and Christos Nikoletopoulos. That treatment has already disappointed Wall Street multiple times, including failing to match Lilly’s Zepbound in a head-to-head trial. Other potential growth drivers remain earlier in development and carry a higher risk of failure

From the peak of the GLP-1 craze in mid-2024, Novo shares in Copenhagen have plunged a staggering 74%, with shares stabilizing since August 2025.

“The event came amid mounting investor pressure for clarity beyond obesity drugs Wegovy and Ozempic as Novo’s semaglutide patent expiries approach in the early 2030s. Investors were increasingly focused on Novo’s next growth drivers following setbacks for obesity candidate CagriSema. Novo said it expects revenue growth between 2026 and 2030 to be in line with industry peers,” UBS analyst Nana Antiedu wrote in a note.

Novo has been pursuing a turnaround effort this year, already leading to substantial restructuring. Doustdar has cut as many as 9,000 jobs and removed several management layers, with total cuts reaching about 13,000. Novo is also pursuing new therapeutic areas and using AI to accelerate drug development.

Submitted by Thomas Kolbe

The hailstorm of bad news from Germany’s auto industry simply refuses to end. Again and again, heavy hailstones from corporate press offices crash down on anxious workforces at the automakers, ruining politicians’ election campaigns and destroying the last hopes of those still clinging to the promise of an electric car made in Germany.

The latest impact: According to a report by Handelsblatt, citing an internal recommendation by Volkswagen’s Supervisory Board, the personnel scalpel is once again being applied to the “Sport Luxury” division, meaning Porsche. Another 4,100 jobs are to be eliminated at Porsche, after it had already become clear that a total of 9,000 positions would disappear over the coming years. Porsche currently still employs 41,800 people.

According to the Supervisory Board’s proposal, Porsche is supposed to improve its operating profit by €3.8 billion by the end of the decade. In overhead costs alone, the Supervisory Board’s calculation shows a gap of around €700 million. That gap is to be closed through the additional job cuts. Volkswagen’s austerity program now seems to be updated almost weekly.

The notion that Volkswagen’s luxury brand Porsche could shield itself from the group-wide restructuring — or, better put, the clear-cutting — is now finally gone. The crisis runs deep, it is comprehensive, and it has already cost 150,000 jobs across the automotive sector. For consulting firm Roland Berger, there is still no end in sight. Berger expects another 200,000 jobs to disappear from Germany’s automotive sector by 2030. Entire value chains — and with them purchasing power, knowledge and prosperity — are disappearing.

A catastrophe for suppliers, for entire regions and for municipal treasuries that had relied so heavily on revenues from what was once Germany’s flagship industry. But that is what happens when you become ideologically entrenched …

Stuttgart is the blueprint for industrial locations across the republic that until recently threw themselves with fervor into the warm, ecologist current. The home of Porsche and Mercedes-Benz closed the last fiscal year with a deficit of €712 million — and the comfortably wealthy city could become a poorhouse if nobody pulls the emergency brake. Residents of these regions will have to prepare for public services — well-equipped schools, municipal sports facilities, swimming pools and recreational centers — to become luxury goods. The automotive industry is leaving; it is leaving behind empty coffers and high unemployment. A German Rust Belt is emerging before our eyes.

The downward spiral has engulfed every segment of Germany’s automotive industry: intense competitive pressure from China, tariff tensions with the United States, towering energy costs at home and an endless regulatory frenzy are all battering the business. It was therefore only a matter of time before even a luxury brand like Porsche would come under the wheels. And the company’s communications strategy seemed strangely familiar: In a kind of salami tactic, common in politics, the company has been announcing since 2024 that Porsche would initially allow temporary production contracts to expire. Around 1,500 employees were affected that year. In February 2025 came the announcement that around 1,900 jobs in Zuffenhausen and Weissach would be eliminated by 2029. Another 500 temporary contracts were not to be renewed.

In May 2026, it continued: Porsche announced the closure of its subsidiaries Cellforce, eBike Performance and Cetitec. More than 500 jobs were lost. At the end of July this year, the future package was finally presented: Another 5,000 jobs are to be eliminated by 2035, naturally in a socially responsible manner. So much should the future be worth.

Taken together, that amounts to around 9,000 jobs — meaning that more than one in three positions at the home location will disappear. Now another 4,100 new job cuts are being added — the company is being ground down further and further.

Volkswagen’s decline is accelerating. A look at its compressed margins is more than alarming: Originally, management had calculated on an operating margin of between 4 and 5.5 percent this year. It has now shrunk to 1 percent. A €10 billion special effect is weighing on the result. The ailing group is in intensive care.

What is happening at Volkswagen is the great mirror image of German industry: poor domestic conditions and excessively high energy costs following disastrous political decisions are making industrial production at home almost impossible. Since 2018, around 15 percent of German industrial production has disappeared. Around 420,000 jobs in manufacturing have been lost since 2019. With these jobs, engineering expertise is disappearing as well — expertise that is indispensable to a society. Disastrous construction projects such as Berlin Brandenburg Airport, Stuttgart 21 or the Hamburg Opera, where costs and schedules regularly spiral out of control, loudly testify to Germany’s brain drain.

Germany in 2026: Some are no longer capable of organizing infrastructure projects, while others, representatives of business and labor unions, are incapable of anticipating trends in global markets. Together, in their hour of need, they strike up a hymn to moralism, in a green overtone, always self-assured and arrogant toward dissenting criticism. A melody of decline.

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About the author: Thomas Kolbe, a graduate economist, has worked for or over 25 years as a journalist and media producer for clients from various industries and business associations. As a publicist, he focuses on economic processes and observes geopolitical events from the perspective of the capital markets. His publications follow a philosophy that focuses on the individual and their right to self-determination.