All the top moves, shakes, and red-hot takes from Azzet's editorial team are right here in your weekly business wrap every Friday (24 October, 2025).
As we head into the spooky end of October, the business week kicked off with handshakes in Washington and closed with the internet in tatters. A standard business week, if there's ever been one.
Between those bookends, Japan finally rubber-stamped its first female prime minister, luxury conglomerates scrambled to offload divisions, and earnings season served a reminder that blockbuster revenues don't necessarily translate to happy shareholders.
Trump's been courting Canberra for its island's mineral wealth, suggestive of a foreign policy driven less by ideology and more by supply chain pragmatism and, of course, AI.
America's man at the top has had enough of both Ukraine and Russia, corporate America discovered that restructuring beats actual growth, and Amazon demonstrated that when the cloud fails, so does half the modern world.
And as earnings season rolls on, markets served a reminder that topping estimates matters less than maintaining narratives - unless you're Netflix, in which case Brazilian tax disputes can torpedo everything.
The great minerals realignment
The week's most consequential development wasn't in boardrooms or data centres - it was in the dirt. Australia and the United States inked a critical minerals pact worth a staggering US$53 billion, the kind of number that makes you wonder whether anyone's using calculators anymore or just adding zeroes until it sounds impressive.
The meeting between Albanese and Trump proved diplomatically eventful, with Trump delivering an unprompted roast of Australian Ambassador Kevin Rudd mid-luncheon:
"I don't know anything in the... Where is he is he still working? He said bad? I don't like you either. And probably never will, [turning to another reporter] go ahead."
Rudd, sitting across the table, maintained diplomatic silence while Albanese channelled considerably more composure than Ukraine's Zelenskyy managed in his own Trump encounter.
Trump declared that "in about a year from now, we'll have so much critical mineral and rare earths that you won't know what to do with them" - presumably filed under promises alongside infrastructure week and healthcare plans.
The framework commits both governments to deploy more than $3 billion over six months to secure supply chains currently dominated by China.
Projects like Alcoa-Sojitz's gallium recovery operation in Western Australia and Arafura's Nolans rare earths project snagged substantial backing, with the clear intention of cutting dependence on Chinese mineral processing.
The arrangement also prompted miners to surge on Tuesday as the ASX 200 reset its high-water mark, though the fine print revealed the entire deal can be terminated with 30 days' written notice - the geopolitical equivalent of a prenuptial agreement.
Meanwhile, Trump shifted decidedly towards Putin after reportedly heated talks with Zelenskyy ended in shouting and demands for Ukraine to cede territory.
The summit between Trump and Putin faced delays as ceasefire negotiations faltered, while Chernihiv plunged into total blackout following Russian attacks.
Yet perhaps Trump, or at least his administration, is dishing out punishment to both sides. The West, led by the U.S., responded by slapping crippling sanctions on Russian oil, and both China and India promptly halted Russian oil purchases on the back of the news a day later.
In Gaza, ceasefire steps continued amid growing fractures, while Ukraine and Sweden signed a deal for Gripen E fighter jets.
Japan appointed Sanae Takaichi as its first female prime minister, the nation's fourth leader in just five years and its first woman to hold the role.
The conservative hard-liner promised Icelandic levels of female cabinet representation before appointing precisely two women to her 19-member cabinet - a masterclass in under-promising and under-delivering.
Corporate surgery season
If there's a theme emerging in boardrooms, it's that companies would rather carve themselves up than confront the future intact.
Warner Bros. Discovery opened itself to a complete sale after receiving multiple unsolicited offers, reversing earlier plans to simply split Warner Bros from Discovery. The media conglomerate's shares jumped nearly 11% on the news - investors evidently prefer potential buyers to actual business plans.
Kering, the luxury group behind Gucci, moved to sell its beauty division to L'Oréal for around US$4 billion, a swift reversal for a unit launched just two years ago.
The sale comes as new CEO Luca De Meo attempts to address net debt that reached 9.5 million euros by June, while Gucci continues its prolonged struggle with Chinese consumer demand.
Pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk saw its chair and six board members quit in what can only be described as a spectacular exodus, while Meta announced plans to axe around 600 of its AI team - presumably they've decided algorithms can fire themselves now.
In Europe, private equity giants tumbled on U.S. credit fears as anxiety over tightening credit conditions rippled across markets. London's Intermediate Capital Group shed 5.5%, while CVC Capital Partners dropped 6.6% and Partners Group slipped 3.4% following a major sell-off in U.S. regional banks.
The culprit? Mounting fears over bad loans lurking within Wall Street's private credit sector, with corporate collapses like First Brands and Tricolor raising uncomfortable questions about lenient lending criteria across the $1 trillion shadow banking sector.
JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon delivered his customary "when you see one cockroach, there's probably more" warning - always reassuring.
Paramount delivered on planned post-merger job cuts, and Molson Coors said it would slash 9% of its Americas workforce - "cheers!" to redundancy notices.
On the M&A front, Goldman Sachs grabbed a US$1 billion majority stake in Excel Sports, while Oaktree remained standing as a bidder for Perpetual, according to the target company itself.
When the cloud fails, so does civilisation
Tuesday brought a stark reminder of modern infrastructure's fragility when an Amazon outage crippled major websites across the globe.
The AWS disruption - the largest since last year's CrowdStrike malfunction - took down Snapchat, Reddit, PayPal's Venmo, Duolingo, and countless others for nine hours.
The issue originated in Amazon's EC2 internal network, the backbone that provides on-demand cloud capacity for businesses worldwide.
After partial recovery, some applications continued experiencing errors. An example of overreliance on a few that control vast swathes of the internet, perhaps?
Anthropic announced a massive expansion of its Google Cloud deal worth tens of billions of dollars. The AI startup now has access to up to one million tensor processing units, with over a gigawatt of capacity coming in 2026.
Google has already pumped $8 billion into Anthropic, which now serves more than 300,000 business customers, with latest figures clocking a $7 billion annualised revenue run rate.
OpenAI's Atlas browser moved to target Google Chrome's dominance, while Applied Digital jumped on a US$5 billion hyperscaler lease deal - another week, another data centre consuming electricity worth more than the GDP of small nations.
Earnings season's mixed signals
Third-quarter results delivered the usual cocktail of beats, misses, and creative accounting explanations.
Wall Street notched a fresh high for the Dow on Wednesday as corporate results lifted sentiment, with the index advancing 218.2 points to finish at 46,924.7. Coca-Cola and 3M proved the biggest drivers, with 3M rallying 7.7% following stronger-than-expected results while technology stocks retreated on renewed US-China trade concerns. Alphabet shed 2.4% and Broadcom slipped 1.9% after Trump cast doubt on his upcoming meeting with Xi Jinping, reminding everyone that geopolitical theatre remains the ultimate portfolio risk.
Netflix shares cratered 6% even as revenue climbed, missing both Wall Street and its own projections with adjusted earnings of US$5.87 per share. The streamer pinned the blame on a dispute with Brazilian tax authorities - because nothing says "global streaming dominance" quite like tax problems in one country torpedoing the entire quarter.
Tesla's stock reversed notwithstanding all-time high deliveries, with net income plunging 29% to US$1.77 billion as higher operating expenses, restructuring charges, and tariffs ate into margins. Revenue hit a peak $28.1 billion, but investors remained unimpressed - turns out blockbuster sales don't matter if you're not keeping the money.
On the positive side, American Express lifted its outlook after a Q3 profit increase, GM revved up markets with raised projections, and Coca-Cola maintained its forecast as Q3 earnings surged - apparently selling sugar water remains a remarkably stable business model. General Motors also unveiled plans for eyes-off driving in its 2028 Cadillac Escalade IQ, alongside conversational AI powered by Google Gemini. CEO Mary Barra painted a vision of vehicles driving themselves while occupants catch up on work or watch shows - conveniently omitting mention of the company's scrapped "Ultra Cruise" system and folded Cruise robotaxis business.
GE Vernova topped expectations on revenue as electrification orders surged, Zions Bancorp exceeded forecasts notwithstanding a US$50 million loan loss, and Newmont's earnings benefited from surging gold prices - when the dollar weakens, miners smile.
The disappointments included Texas Instruments slumping 8.1% on a weak Q4 outlook, SAP missing revenue targets as cloud growth decelerated, and Red Hat proving a red flag for IBM as shares dipped. AT&T held to its forecast after a flat Q3, while Hilton topped estimates yet trimmed its outlook on low US demand - even hotels struggle when nobody's travelling.
Ford's earnings triumph came with trimmed projections after a supplier fire, Intel jumped 7.2% on better-than-expected results as demand recovered, and Blackstone hailed an exceptional quarter as profit fell - a reminder that in private equity, "exceptional" is relative.
T-Mobile delivered positive Q3 growth, American Airlines shares took off on an upgraded outlook, and Volvo Group earnings dipped on lower North American sales.
Infrastructure and insight
Across the policy landscape, the White House moved to halt $11 billion in infrastructure projects, while government shutdown discussions suggested an end might arrive this week - or next week, or whenever everyone's had enough theatre.
The US and Argentina entered a $20 billion swap deal amid a peso rout, Canada granted tariff relief to steel and aluminium products, and the FAA loosened its grip on Boeing production - presumably confident that planes can now be trusted to stay assembled mid-flight.
Analysis revealed that small-caps' bull case may have run its course, LICs lagged as macro headwinds hammered performance, and the VIX received an explainer for investors still pretending volatility indices predict anything beyond collective market anxiety.
Expedia released top-searched destinations for 2025, Tabcorp saw a national betting pool still a year away, and the market found GYG's buyback hard to swallow - even investors have their limits for gorging on late-night Mexican food.
International shares pushed super returns to 0.8%, real estate returns clocked in at 7.9% according to Dexus, and Kangaroo bonds attracted diversifying investors hunting alternatives to traditional fixed income.
A mission-critical $3 billion investment aimed to counter China's dominance in strategic sectors, China's iPhone sales drove Apple near a $4 trillion valuation, and U.S. home sales climbed in September as mortgage rates dipped - showing that even modest rate movements can unlock buyer enthusiasm when prices remain astronomical.
Next week brings more earnings, inevitably more geopolitical manoeuvring, and quite possibly another reminder that modern infrastructure operates on far thinner margins of error than anyone's comfortable admitting.
