25/09/2025

BIZ & FINANCE THURSDAY | SEPT 25, 2025

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EU queries Big Tech over financial scams

Powell warns of inflation risks WASHINGTON: US Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell warned on Tuesday that slashing interest rates too quickly could allow inflation to remain elevated, but stressed that the central bank faces dual challenges moving forward. “There is no risk-free path,” he told a Rhode Island event. “If we ease too aggressively, we could leave the inflation job unfinished and need to reverse course later to fully restore 2% inflation.” “If we maintain restrictive policy too long, the labor market could soften unnecessarily,” the US central bank chair added. The Fed made its first rate cut of the year last week, lowering the benchmark lending rate by 25 basis points in a widely anticipated move. The reduction came while the independent central bank faced intensifying pressure from President Donald Trump. He has repeatedly criticised Powell – calling him a“numbskull”– for keeping rates unchanged. But Powell’s remarks underscore the tightrope that Fed officials walk as they work to maintain price stability and maximum employment, balancing both inflation and labour market concerns. Policymakers have been divided on the best path forward as the jobs market weakened while inflation remained above their two-percent target. New Fed governor Stephen Miran, who was newly appointed by Trump, voted against last week’s rate decision and instead pushed for a bigger 50-basis-points cut. On the other hand, even as policymakers penciled in two more rate reductions overall this year, several projected no further cuts as well. For now, Powell noted that increases in goods prices, which are driving a recent inflation pick-up, appear to largely reflect higher tariffs. The pass-through of US tariffs to consumers has appeared later and less than expected, but Powell said that many forecasts anticipate this could continue well into next year. He vowed that officials would ensure a one-time increase in costs due to Trump’s sweeping duties does not become an ongoing inflation problem. – AFP LVMH to buy top business magazine PARIS: French luxury group LVMH has reached agreement to purchase top business magazine Challenges , the latter’s main shareholder Claude Perdriel told AFP on Tuesday, with the deal expected for early next year. LVMH, owned by billionaire Bernard Arnault, had been eying the latest of several media conquests for some time and the deal will notably add titles including Sciences et Avenir (Science and Future) to a growing stable. For Perdriel, “the important thing, is that the journal be in good hands and continues with a shareholder determined to defend it”. The group already owns the Les Echos - Le Parisien group, which includes those two newspapers and Radio Classique. It also acquired earlier this year the liberal daily L’Opinion and financial news site L’Agefi , in which it already had a stake. Challenges , founded in 1982 and which Perdriel bought five years later, describes itself as “a non-partisan and independent economic and political magazine”. According to France’s Alliance for Press and Media Figures (ACPM), the magazine sold more than 140,000 copies on average per issue across 2024, compared to 183,000 in 2020. On Monday, Challenges journalists warned the future buyer, without naming LVMH, that they must preserve “their editorial independence” and also maintain publication of the annual ranking of the wealthiest people in the county. Arnault and his family rank second in the 2025 edition of the list of well-to-do. – AFP

Facebook and Instagram as well as TikTok and X. But its rules have faced the wrath of Trump – who has shaken up global trade by hitting America’s trading partners with higher tariffs and threatened more levies on those he accuses of targeting US tech companies. The US State Department, Trump allies and critics including Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg and X owner Elon Musk have called European rules censorship. The EU rejects such claims, stressing that whatever is illegal in the real world is also illegal in the online realm. It has also pushed back at accusations it is targeting American titans, pointing to investigations into major Chinese players that face DSA scrutiny including shopping platform AliExpress. Defenders of the bloc’s tech rules have meanwhile attacked the EU for failing to complete its probe into Musk’s X, which opened in December 2023. X is expected to be hit with a fine, but Brussels says technical work in the investigation continues. EU digital chief Henna Virkkunen told AFP last week that probes into online platforms including X will be completed in the “coming weeks and months”. She warned more investigations could also be on the way. – AFP

“This is an essential step also to protect users across the EU from certain of these practices, and to make sure that platforms in the EU also play their role,” EU digital affairs spokesman Thomas Regnier told reporters in Brussels. The request relates to Apple’s App Store, Google Play, online travel agent Booking and Microsoft’s Bing search engine. The EU fears app stores could be used by scammers to create fake apps posing as legitimate banking services, or fraudsters could publish links to fake websites on search engines. A Microsoft spokesperson said the company was “committed to creating safe experiences online and will continue to engage with the European Commission”. Google said it blocked hundreds of millions of “scammy results in search every day”, while Booking said it would “engage constructively” with Brussels. “Between 2023 and 2024, we have seen a drop from 1.5 million phishing-related fake reservations detected and blocked down to 250,000,” Booking added. The EU has a bolstered legal armoury with the DSA and its sister law, the Digital Markets Act, which seeks to ensure fair competition online. Brussels has already launched multiple investigations under the DSA into Meta’s

BRUSSELS: The European Union on Tuesday demanded Big Tech players including Apple and Google explain what action they are taking against financial scams online, as Brussels seeks to show it is not shying away from enforcing its rules. The European Commission sent a request for information under the Digital Services Act (DSA) to the companies, also including Microsoft and Booking, “on how they make sure that their services are not being misused by scammers”, an EU spokesman said. The DSA is the EU’s landmark law demanding Big Tech firms do more to tackle illegal content, but it has faced retaliation threats from US President Donald Trump and censorship claims from the US tech sector. The EU has vowed it will not back down from enforcing its rules to protect Europeans online. Tuesday’s request could lead to a probe under the DSA and even fines, but does not itself suggest the law has been broken, nor is it a move towards punishment. o Brussels seeks to show it is not shying away from enforcing its rules

Stellantis to pause output at six European factories PARIS: Auto company Stellantis, whose brands include Jeep, Peugeot and Fiat, plans to pause production at six European factories because of slowing sales, French business daily Les Echos reported. The factories are in France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain, the paper said. Both units blamed the production pauses on “difficult” market conditions in Europe and a need to “rebalance” inventory. days, and in Zaragoza and Madrid, Spain for seven and 14 days respectively. Unions are concerned that the world’s fourth largest car company will close other factories in Europe, where producers are facing weak sales, US tariffs and aggressive competition from China. The Stellantis plant in Poissy, west of Paris, will be shut down for three weeks in October and its 2,000 employees will be placed on short-time working and leave. – AFPPIC

A Stellantis spokesperson in Poland confirmed to AFP on Tuesday that “downtime” is planned at the Tichy factory in the south of the country, without specifying for how long. According to Les Echos, this site will be closed for nine days in October. The other plants affected, according to the newspaper, are those in Eisenach, Germany, which is expected to close for five

Stellantis is not the only European automaker facing difficulties: on Friday, Volkswagen, the crisis-hit flagship of the German auto industry, lowered its forecasts for 2025, as it prepares to cut 35,000 jobs in Germany. – AFP

Stellantis in France confirmed that a factory near Paris would close for two weeks, while a spokesperson for Stellantis in Italy confirmed that a factory near Naples would stop producing Fiat Pandas for a week.