Nvidia board meets to discuss Huang’s future

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0:33Today is Thursday, November 12th, and this is your FT News Briefing. New revelations have put NVIDIA's CEO in even hotter water. Can he survive? Now it's reached a crisis point, and we're really waiting to see whether he's going to be ousted from the company that he himself founded way back in 1993. And European nations are struggling to get off the sidelines of Russia-Ukraine peace talks. The Americans are in the Kremlin today, while the Europeans can't even decide what they'd want to say, if indeed they got anywhere near the Kremlin. Plus, what was behind the general strike in Spain? I'm Sonia Hudson, and here's the news you need to start your day.

1:23At the time of this recording, NVIDIA still hasn't made a decision about Jensen Wang. But the board held urgent talks late on Wednesday to decide the CEO's future. That's according to people familiar with the matter. The meeting comes after revelations yesterday that Wang had a romantic relationship with a top executive at the company. And he was already under pressure after it was revealed he had an affair with an alleged Chinese spy. NVIDIA did not respond to a request for comment. I'm joined now by the FT's John Foley to talk more about this. He heads up our Lex column. Hi, John. Hi there. So tell me more about what we learned on Wednesday.

2:01So on Wednesday, we learned the New York Times broke a story saying that Jensen Huang, who, of course, as you say, we already knew, was being investigated for a relationship with a woman who the U.S. authorities think might be a Chinese spy, had also had a relationship in the past with someone who is an employee of NVIDIA. So that raises the stakes. Previously, we were waiting to see what the board committee and the outside lawyers would find when they investigated Huang and the supposed Chinese spy. Now it's reached a crisis point and we're really waiting to see whether he's going to be ousted from the company that he himself founded way back in 1993.

2:36Now, if Huang does, in fact, leave his post as CEO, what would that mean for NVIDIA? This would be an enormous shift for a company that Huang founded more than 30 years ago. He is the CEO of the company. He really is unchallenged. He has close to 60 direct reports. He is the face of NVIDIA. And he's also, we understand, heavily involved with the actual business of designing and marketing and selling these chips that are powering the AI boom. So it's really hard to imagine what this company looks like without him. And already the stock is down about 15 percent from where it was on Friday before we learned about these allegations.

3:14So this is a really big deal for a really big company. Yeah, NVIDIA is just a huge player in the AI industry. What would Wong's departure mean for the sector as a whole? So Huang, as well as being the boss of NVIDIA, has also been a real cheerleader for the AI industry at large. He has been a kind of voice of reason at moments when the market has been very anxious and wobbly, particularly when you think of things like the very sizable software stocks fell off that happened earlier in the year. So people listen to him and he does seem to have an ability to kind of stabilize markets. And NVIDIA is a huge part of the market.

3:56It's about 6 % or 7 % of the S &P 500. So with him no longer there, and of course, it would then remain to be seen where he would show up next. But it's really not clear who would be the voice of an enormous and growing industry. John Foley is the head of the FT's Lex column. Thanks, John. Thanks for having me.

4:22it's a tale of two cities today when it comes to the war in ukraine u.s officials will be in moscow negotiating with russian president vladimir putin about how to end the conflict meanwhile in dublin european officials will be meeting amongst themselves and then with ukraine to debate how to engage with russia and get a seat at the table the ft's brussels bureau chief Henry Foy is here to talk about Europe's push to stay relevant in the peace talks. Hey, Henry. Hi, Sonia. So, Henry, what are European leaders talking about in Dublin over the next two days? So here in Dublin today, European leaders are going to be sitting down with Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky and really talking about how the continent gets more of a say, has more of a role in the negotiations around a possible peace agreement in Ukraine that's deciding both who should speak for Europe and what they should say to Vladimir Putin.

5:14If there's a single image that should focus minds amongst the Europeans, it's the fact that the Americans are in the Kremlin today, while the Europeans can't even decide what they'd want to say if indeed they got anywhere near the Kremlin. Well, that image certainly doesn't bode well for the Europeans' desire to be more involved in the peace talks. But tell me more about what they'll be debating amongst themselves today. Europe is a pretty diverse continent on many, many issues. And essentially you have capitals who cannot agree on one person that would represent all of the states on the continent.

5:45There are some that say it can't be somebody who's not from the east, given that the country is near to Russia, say they understand Russia the best. There are those who are not from the east that say, well, it certainly can't be somebody from the east because they're far too hawkish on Moscow and Putin would never sit down and talk to them. It's got to be someone who's senior. It's proving very, very difficult. This conversation has been going on now for more than 18 months. They can't come up with somebody. And it really does risk making Europe a pretty disjoint, pretty incoherent in its stance regarding the war.

6:14Okay, so this debate's been going on for a while. Why is it bubbling up right now? Well, Sonia, since US President Donald Trump was reelected and came in saying he would bring an end to the war, there's been this cycle that we've seen every few months. The US reengages with Russia, the Europeans freak out, they think they're being cut out of the talks. And then there's these frantic and ad hoc efforts, mainly by certain capitals or by groups of capitals, that changes each time to try and talk to the Russians. That normally wins a kind of seat or seats on the sidelines of whatever's being discussed amongst the Americans, Ukrainians and Russians.

6:48So just this week in Abu Dhabi, we had the first trilateral discussions for months and months. There was no big breakthrough. There was some decisions on prisoner of war swaps. The Europeans were there in an adjacent room and were talking to the Americans and the Ukrainians before and after the talks, but didn't get a seat at the main table. Sounds like this is just another iteration in that cycle then. What do you think would break it? It's interesting that a lot of senior European officials that I've spoken to this week say, look, we know the talks at the moment are not going to lead to a big breakthrough, but we have to keep being there at all these talks so that when there is the big talks, the big talks that really do make a breakthrough, we're invited.

7:25And so it's a little bit sort of going through the motions, making sure everyone keeps remembering the Europeans. Ultimately, this will come down to when the Ukrainians and the Russians both feel that they're in a strong position or a very weak position to have to come to a deal. Europe plays a huge role in that, of course. It's the biggest by far supporter of Ukraine in both budgetary and military. And membership of the EU is a key demand for Ukraine in a post-conflict scenario. But for the moment, it's sort of a holding pattern in terms of the peace negotiations. but Europe knows it has to have something ready to deploy if and when it needs to really engage in the peace talks.

8:00That's the FT's Brussels Bureau Chief, Henry Foy. Thanks, Henry. Thank you so much, Sonia.

8:12Spaniards have taken to the streets as part of a general strike over a growing affordability crisis.

8:21It's Spain's first general strike in nearly 15 years. And it comes in the run-up to national elections later this month that left-wing Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called. And it's unclear if the protests will help or hurt him. Picketers have clashed with police. Strikers have blocked highways. They've stood outside the entrance to factories. They've occupied train stations. That's the FT's Barney Jopson in Madrid. The people on strike are upset about two things. One is stagnant wages that haven't risen as much as they would have liked over the last eight to 10 years. And the other is a housing crisis over access to affordable housing.

8:59The festering anger over this really blew up in the last couple of months due to the eviction of an 87-year-old woman who'd been living in a rented apartment for her whole life and was kicked out by a corporate landlord. That sparked huge outrage and that really brought the housing issue right to the top of the political agenda. Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez saw his moment. He tried to pass some housing reforms and in Parliament the Conservative opposition blocked him. So he decided that was a moment to try and capture the anger. And three days later he called a snap election. But what's happened in the time since is that more people have realized that the problem with housing is not only to do with the right-wingers who blocked his legislative reforms, they've realized it's to do with a broader range of factors such as why has more public housing not been built in the last years?

9:51There's been a huge increase in Spain's immigrant population in the last eight years, and there's just not been enough housing construction to keep up with the growth in the immigrant population. So that gamble might not pay off. What the polls tell us is that Pedro Sanchez is very likely to lose power. The polls suggests that two right-wing parties, the mainstream conservative People's Party and the far-right Fox Party, will between them have enough votes to form a majority. If they get a majority between them, Sanchez will be gone. Sanchez and his socialist party say that the polls overstate right-wing support.

10:27They think they can still pull a victory out of the hat somehow, but it's not looking positive for them. Barney Jobson is the FT's Spain and Portugal correspondent.

10:43We've got an update on September's attempted attack on a British airbase. As a reminder, five men were arrested while driving three vans near RAF Fairford. Two of the vans had oil drums filled with petrol. An indictment from the U.S. Department of Justice says that this attempt was partially directed by an Iranian-Iraqi national from jail in New York. Mohammed al-Sadi was detained back in May. Then the U.S. charged him with a series of offenses related to several attacks across Europe. Those attacks stopped in May after his arrest. The indictment said that al-Sahdi had phone calls from jail with family members located in Iraq.

11:22He allegedly used those calls to pass coded messages to the men allegedly involved in the Fairford incident. Iran has consistently denied any role in the various attacks across Europe. You can read more on all these stories for free when you click the links in our show notes. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Check back tomorrow for the latest news from the Financial Times.

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