US Big Tech gets the most facetime with EU

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0:32Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Thursday, October 1st, and this is your FT News Briefing. We have the latest on the attempted hijacking of a plane headed for Israel. And big tech lobbyists are getting a lot of face time with the EU. Plus, Nike is racing to keep up with local competition in China. I'm Mark Filippino, and here's the news you need to start your day.

1:07More details are emerging about an attack in a plane headed to Tel Aviv yesterday. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that one pilot attacked the other and, quote, apparently tried to crash the plane. The motive is still unclear. DFT's Middle East editor, Andrew England, is covering this story. Hi, Andrew. Hi, how are you doing? Doing well. So what do we know about the attempted hijacking? Well, we know the Fly Dubai flight took off from Dubai. That's a budget airline owned by the Dubai government. It was flying to Tel Aviv. And then about two hours into the flight, the crew put out two warnings.

1:45One warning is a sort of a special warning that can indicate a hijacking. The plane plunged. It was going up and down very steeply. and then we started to get reports that there'd been an altercation, which is what the carrier said in the flight cabin. And then reports started emerging that one pilot had tried to stab another pilot. The passengers and the crew then subdued the assailant, tied him up, and another pilot who happened to be on the plane, I'm not sure if he's a member of the crew or he just had to be flying, helped divert the plane and land it in Tabuk, which is in northwest Saudi Arabia.

2:26Now, we should mention that an Israeli official said the attacker was an Omani national and described the incident as a planned 9-11 style attack, but the information could not be independently verified. Yeah, we got no confirmation of that. We don't know the identity of the assailant yet. We don't know the motive. Fly Dubai has said that there was an altercation. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has suggested that it was, appeared to be what he called a terrorist attack. But we're still waiting to get details. Given that, how do you think Israel will react? Obviously, the government's going to be very concerned about this incident.

3:08There'll be questions about whether it's another security failure. I mean, the other thing will be watching out how it plays in Israeli politics. There's an election on October the 27th. It's the first election since the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023. It's going to be a very tight race. Netanyahu and his coalition are looking to extend their term. The opposition would already have used the security failing of October 7, 2023 to attack Netanyahu. And there will probably be questions over this incident. And I wouldn't be surprised if it is politicized in what is quite a toxic political environment.

3:52Does this mean anything for the region's security? I think, you know, since Hamas's October the 7th, 2023 attack on Israel, and Israel's subsequent war in Gaza against Hamas, and the kind of cycles of conflict that triggered across the region, and now, of course, we've got the US-Israeli war against Iran in its seventh month, Israelis have been concerned about their security. They'd be concerned that Muslims and Arabs across the region are outraged by Israel's conduct. Now, again, we don't know the motive for this particular attack yet, but I think it will reinforce the sense in Israel, within the government, among Israelis, that there is a threat to them when they travel, when they move around, etc.

4:42etc. Andrew England is the FT's Middle East editor. Thanks so much, Andrew. Thank you.

4:53U.S. big tech is throwing its weight around in Brussels. An FT analysis found that these companies have an outsized influence when it comes to meetings with European Union policymakers. Laura Dubois covers the EU and specializes in data. She's here with me now. Hi, Laura. Hi. So what kind of metrics did you look at to determine influence here? So there's a lot of data out there in Brussels actually about lobbying. It's a very big topic that people are interested in. And there are logs of meetings that lobbyists have in the European Parliament and in the European Commission. So we found around 110 ,000 meetings that organizations had since the elections in June 2024.

5:33And we basically found that American organizations had the highest meeting count, in particular big tech companies. So looking at individual companies, Google, Apple and Amazon actually topped the list. We also looked at lobby spending, which is also something most organizations disclose. And we found that American companies also tend to spend a lot more than European companies. So, for example, Apple spends 9 million euros a year just on lobbying. And if you compare that with the top European companies we found, which are Total Energies, Volkswagen and Airbus, they combined spent 8.7 million euros a year.

6:13Oh, wow. So Apple spent more than those top three European companies put together. And, you know, we should say that the FT did reach out to those European companies and they declined to comment. Do we know what Apple and other American businesses were trying to lobby for? Yes. A big thing that they are trying to lobby for is simplification and deregulation. And big tech in particular are trying to influence the EU's very influential digital rules, which have also been about by our U.S. President Donald Trump, who, I mean, he's repeatedly threatened tariffs over the EU, implementing rules on U.S.

6:46companies. And these rules, for example, govern how platforms have to act, what kind of content they have to police. They also include AI safeguards, for example. Right. And Google said its engagement with policymakers was reflective of the, quote, breadth of new regulations we navigate. Amazon and Apple also commented that they discuss topics that are important to their customers and their businesses. Laura, how significant are these findings? Well, transparency activists that we've spoken to, for example, someone from Transparency International, the campaign group, say that it's striking that policymakers seem to give more access to U.S.

7:26companies, especially at a time where European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, also other policymakers have said we should become more sovereign and sort of disentangle ourselves from the U.S. So I think it's interesting to see that American companies are still very influential. Yeah, I mean, it really tells us a lot about the way things are getting done in Brussels. Yes, it shows us that corporate actors have a very big influence in Brussels when it comes to policymaking. So one other finding that we saw in the data is that when you look at meetings overall, that is meetings with registered organizations, most of them were with companies or trade and business associations and just around 23 % with NGOs and think tanks.

8:09And this sort of chimes with something that civil society has said for a while that the commission, when they make new laws, are listening more to companies than they are to fitness concerns. And yeah, I think this data sort of echoes those concerns. Laura Dubois is an EU correspondent for the FT. Thanks, Laura. Thanks.

8:33One of the world's largest accounting firms is exploring an initial public offering, and if RSM does decide to go public, it could be the biggest ever listing of an accounting firm. Now, the audit sector as a whole is experiencing a wave of consolidation. Some of RSM's rivals have abandoned the traditional partnership model and sold the private equity. That has allowed them to make a series of big acquisitions. But RSM has held out. However, people familiar with the matter say it would opt for a stock market flotation if executives think they need more capital for major deals. When asked about an IPO, an RSM spokesperson said, We are well positioned and have many options available to support our growth in alignment with our strategy.

9:21Nike was once considered the king of cool in China. Not anymore. The company has financial results dropping today, and international competitors are hot on its heels. Here to talk to me about the company's troubles in China is the FT's Thomas Hale. Hi, Tom. Hi there. Thanks for having me. Tom, this seems like a big change for the company because historically, Nike has had a pretty strong reputation in China, right? So Nike was one of quite a few foreign and particularly American companies that benefited enormously from the reopening of China to the world, particularly in the 1990s to 2000s and into the 2010s.

9:59And really what we've seen with Nike since its Greater China revenues peaked in 2021 is really quite a substantial decline in their revenues in this part of the world. I mean, I think when Nike's quarterly results come out, all eyes are going to be on that number, on what the revenues are out of Greater China. That's really become almost a kind of routine every three months to the point that it's now really weighing on the momentum for Nike globally. Wow. So how did things go wrong for Nike? I think as with many other sectors in China, there's immense competition in sportswear. And that includes longstanding rivals like Adidas, new international challenges like Hocker and On Running from Switzerland.

10:45And then of course, the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian has so many domestic Chinese brands that are in many cases offering products at much lower prices. The other issue that Nike has faced is that it's really struggled to adapt to a transition from bricks and mortar to e-commerce in China. And particularly in the COVID pandemic, there ended up being over 1 ,000 digital storefronts where you could buy Nike products. And an issue arose where some of these sellers were maybe competing with each other on price and driving down the price, and Nike was really losing control. So that has been a big part of the problem.

11:23And Nike has said that from January next year, it will take back control of its online sales and stop other distributors selling online and centralize its online sales through its own flagship stores. All right. So it sounds like Nike lost out on some of the market share in China. Also, honestly, sounds like it kind of shot itself in the foot there. It's trying to get back on track. What else is it doing to try to get back in the race? So in addition to the kind of practicalities of selling online, they're also shifting a little bit towards more localized product design. They've increased the size of their local content creation team.

12:03And maybe if we step back a little bit and look in the longer term, a few decades ago, the real appeal of a brand like Nike was that it was able to offer global products into this emergent mainland Chinese market. You know, in 2026, there's much more of a sense of a need to cater to the particular local tastes that exist here. And Nike, like many of its competitors, and like many foreign companies really across sectors, is just another company that's having to deal with that reality. On the other hand, you have this absolutely enormous population, this enormous market with huge demand for sportswear.

12:39And so that's why we see the world's biggest sportswear brands still so eager to adapt to Chinese consumer tastes and to try to protect the market share that they still have. And we will see how they are doing when they report earnings later today. Thomas Hale is the FT's Shanghai correspondent. Thanks so much, Tom. Thank you very much.

13:03You 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 business news.

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