BUSINESS

The FTSE 100 dropped 1.25% on Friday as geopolitical concerns and uncertainty over the Bank of England's future rate decisions outweighed stronger retail sales and lower oil prices.

Agile Energy research says demand charges based on a business's highest 30-minute electricity use can add thousands annually, while network location may create much larger cost differences.

South Korea's KOSPI rose 2.81% to 6,903.94 as lower oil prices and an anticipated US Federal Reserve rate rise eased inflation concerns, with institutions driving broad gains.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke says lowering net overseas migration will create economic trade-offs, with farmers warning that limits on working holidaymakers could worsen labour shortages and raise food prices.

IBM shares fell 3.2% amid pressure on infrastructure and mainframe operations, despite resilient software growth, strong cash flow and ongoing investment in AI and quantum computing.

Forgent Power Solutions shares rose nearly 12% after the company reported record quarterly results, strong bookings and backlog growth, and raised its full-year earnings guidance.

AMD shares rose 4.15% in midmorning trading as semiconductor stocks recovered from recent losses linked to concerns that AI safety debates could slow infrastructure spending.

Intel shares climbed after reports that SK hynix is considering using Intel's US capacity and CEO Lip-Bu Tan said the company can meet only about half of customer CPU demand.

Riot Platforms shares gained as investors continued backing its shift into AI data centres, following a long-term Anthropic capacity agreement worth an estimated $9.1 billion.

Salesforce shares traded nearly flat after a global outage disrupted hundreds of customer instances during Dreamforce, as investors appeared to treat the technical failure as temporary.

Cipher Digital shares rose 11.25% as investors focused on its transition from bitcoin mining to AI data centres, a growing hyperscale backlog and upcoming facility launches.

GameStop's pursuit of eBay remains unresolved, with reports suggesting Ryan Cohen may favour a partnership over the proposed $56bn takeover while retaining a substantial stake in the company.

Salesforce resolved a global service outage lasting about four hours, but the company has not disclosed its financial cost, while customer losses and reputational damage remain difficult to quantify.

A global Salesforce outage disrupted access to core services across several countries during Dreamforce, with the company tracing the incident to an internal login service bottleneck.

Owala is releasing five Pokémon-themed FreeSip water bottles exclusively at Target to mark Pokémon's 30th anniversary, with designs featuring several of the franchise's best-known characters.

Elon Musk leads Forbes' wealthiest Americans for a fifth consecutive year with $908 billion, while the combined fortune of the Forbes 400 reaches a record $8 trillion.

Samsung co-led a $231 million funding round for Dutch startup Euclyd, seeking exposure to AI inference chips, memory-centric architecture and alternatives to Nvidia's market dominance.