When the central bank of the Netherlands confirmed this week that it had moved tonnes of the country’s gold out of North America, it said the relocation would make it “better prepared for severe crises”.

Some 86 tonnes from the combined total of about 313 tonnes held in the US and Canada were relocated to London “in view of increasing geopolitical unrest”, it said, so the shiny stuff could be “readily available for use in a crisis situation”.

Questions were bound to follow. Why were the Dutch doing this? Were they anticipating some major economic shock on the horizon?

It seems not, but the move was clearly in response to the unstable and uncertain state the world finds itself in, with trade and military wars prompting countries to take precautions and hold their gold closer to home.

Earlier this year, France announced it had removed its gold reserves from the US to home shores. Meanwhile, Germany’s Bundesbank transferred more than 216 tonnes of the metal from storage locations abroad – 111 tonnes from New York and 105 tonnes from Paris – over a few years ending in 2016., external

It is a strategy which has played out before in times of global instability. “Some European central banks moved part of their gold holdings to New York during the Cold War,” said research analysts Lina Thomas and Daan Struyven of Goldman Sachs.

Joseph Cavatoni, senior market strategist at the World Gold Council, told the BBC while wars and trade tensions were “playing into some of these decisions”, it didn’t “top the list” of motivating factors.

Inflation, interest rates and just having gold in a place where it can be traded quickly also played a role.

“I don’t get a sense that there’s an impending doom,” Cavatoni said, “but what I do think is people are being better educated around how to manage their reserve assets, growing their reserve assets, and actually thinking more effectively around how to make the most of those assets.”

De Nederlandsche Bank said the gold removed from the US and Canada between March and August this year was now being held in the vaults of the Bank of England.

“We expect that we will never need to use them, but we do need to strengthen our resilience and preparedness,” said the governor of the Dutch central bank, Olaf Sleijpen.

London was seen as the best choice due its position in the world as a major trading centre. If you want to be able to buy or sell gold fast in a crisis, London is the place to be, which makes the Bank of England a popular storage spot.

In recent months, Welsh figures, external suggested the proportion of young people in Wales who are not in education, employment, or training (Neet) had risen sharply.

They increased to 17% and returned to levels last seen around 2013, according to Welsh government figures.

Cian Halliday, 26, a carpenter from Llanrug, had been made redundant during the Covid-19 pandemic, something he said had been “difficult, and a struggle”.

“Academi Adra were offering courses, and almost 16 weeks of work experience and at the end they decided to keep me on as a labourer. I did that for a year,” he said.

“Then they offered me an apprenticeship and I chose to be a carpenter.”

He said that being made redundant had been very tough.

“It was difficult, and a struggle to find work, so I decided, the minute this opportunity came up, to start a new job.”

While looking for work, Cian said there had not been enough opportunities for young people like him.

“I was happy enough to change careers. I jumped at the opportunity and never looked back,” he said.

MELBOURNE, Australia — Shares of Sunrise Energy Metals Ltd. climbed $1.145, or 7.51%, to $16.395, as the small-cap critical minerals company continues building momentum following a landmark U.S. government financing commitment for its Syerston scandium project in New South Wales.

The company, formerly known as Clean TeQ Holdings before rebranding in March 2021, has emerged over the past year as one of the most closely watched names on the ASX within the broader critical minerals sector, with its market capitalization surging more than 2,400% over the trailing 12 months as investors have bet heavily on the strategic importance of its flagship scandium project.

Sunrise’s stock has been on a sustained upward trajectory since early August, when the Pentagon’s Office of Strategic Capital confirmed a conditional US$400 million loan commitment for the Syerston project, located near Fifield in central-west New South Wales. Shares surged as much as 20% in a single session following that initial confirmation, touching a fresh 52-week high near $19 and pushing the company’s market capitalization to roughly $3 billion Australian dollars at the time.

Sunrise Chairman Robert Friedland, the mining billionaire and founder of Ivanhoe Mines, described the U.S. financing commitment as a defining moment for both the company and Australia’s broader mining industry.

“A landmark moment,” Friedland said, adding that “scandium is one of the clearest examples, supporting the technologies, industries and defence capabilities that will shape the coming decades.”

If completed, Syerston is designed to become the world’s first primary scandium mine, a distinction significant given that scandium has historically been produced only as a byproduct of other mining operations rather than mined as a primary target. The project boasts a 60.3-million-tonne resource, an existing mining lease, development consent, environmental approvals and secured water rights, positioning it as unusually advanced for a critical minerals project at this stage of development.

Scandium is a silvery-white metal valued for its ability to significantly strengthen aluminum alloys while remaining lightweight, flexible and resistant to heat and corrosion, making it particularly important for aerospace applications, defense technology, and increasingly, power delivery for artificial intelligence data centers and other power-constrained infrastructure. New South Wales holds some of the highest concentrations of scandium found anywhere in the world.

Defense contractor Lockheed Martin holds an option to purchase up to 15 tonnes of scandium oxide annually for the project’s first five years, representing roughly 25% of Syerston’s planned initial production capacity. Initial development at the site is targeting production of 60 tonnes of high-purity scandium oxide annually over an estimated 32-year mine life, with the company separately evaluating a second development phase that could add a further 120 tonnes of annual capacity.

Sunrise CEO Sam Riggall has described scandium as occupying a unique position within the broader critical minerals landscape, telling CNBC’s “Europe Early Edition” that the scandium market remains one of the smallest in the world despite its outsized strategic importance across defense and advanced manufacturing applications.

The Pentagon financing commitment came alongside a broader push by U.S. officials to reduce Western reliance on Chinese-controlled critical mineral supply chains. China currently produces nearly 70% of the world’s rare earth supply from domestic mines and processes almost 90% of global supply, refining material imported from other countries, a level of dominance Western governments have increasingly flagged as a strategic vulnerability given the expected exponential growth in critical minerals demand tied to the broader clean energy transition.

A statement accompanying the U.S. financing commitment described the deal, which combines both public and private capital and totals nearly $1 billion when including related financing components, as a significant step toward establishing genuine supply chain resilience for scandium specifically.

“The contemplated Sunrise transaction marks a significant step in establishing supply chain resiliency for an increasingly critical mineral,” the statement read, adding that the deal “would help address foreign dependencies in scandium supply and facilitate scandium’s use in critical defense and commercial applications.”

Beyond the core Pentagon financing, Sunrise has continued building out its broader supply-chain relationships in recent months. The company disclosed a US$5 million stake in Agni Semiconductor, a private developer of aluminum scandium nitride semiconductor technology, and secured acceptance into the New South Wales government’s Critical Minerals Royalty Deferral Scheme, becoming one of only two companies admitted to that program so far. The U.S. Export-Import Bank has also issued a letter of interest for up to US$67 million in additional financing support tied to the project.

Sunrise has also disclosed a revised capital cost estimate for Syerston of between $450 million and $475 million Australian dollars, or roughly $315 million to $333 million U.S. dollars, reflecting an expanded project scope that now includes plans for downstream refining capacity to be built in the United States, in addition to the core mining and processing facilities in New South Wales. The company has said it has already begun preparations for a listing on a U.S. securities exchange, a step that would require shareholder, court and regulatory approvals but could open access to deeper capital markets and further strengthen its position within U.S. defense and advanced technology supply chains.

According to reporting from Kalkine Media, key milestones investors are watching closely in the coming months include finalization of binding documentation for both the Pentagon loan and the Lockheed Martin offtake agreement, continued progress on the project’s Front-End Engineering Design study, long-lead equipment orders, half-year results expected later this month, and, most significantly, whether the company’s targeted Final Investment Decision lands within the current September quarter as planned.

Analysts have cautioned that despite the wave of positive developments, meaningful execution risk remains. The Pentagon’s financing commitment is explicitly conditional, phased and contingent on Sunrise contributing its own equity alongside milestone-based drawdowns, meaning the deal’s ultimate value to the company depends heavily on Sunrise successfully clearing a series of remaining financial, legal and technical requirements before the financing can formally close.

With early works and long-lead procurement already underway to preserve a targeted first-production timeline in the second half of 2028, Sunrise Energy Metals has positioned itself as one of the more advanced Western scandium projects moving toward production, even as the company continues navigating the substantial financing and regulatory milestones still required to bring Syerston fully online in the years ahead.

Shares of HEG appeared to have fallen nearly 64% on Monday, but the sharp drop was largely a price adjustment following the company’s demerger into two separately listed entities focused on graphite electrodes and advanced materials.

After closing at Rs 728.25 apiece on Friday, HEG shares opened around 64% lower at Rs 260 apiece on Monday as it adjusted to the demerger on the record date. The stock now trades excluding the value of the graphite electrodes business. The company currently has a market capitalisation of around Rs 5,095 crore.

Earlier last month, HEG fixed September 7 as the record date to determine which shareholders will be eligible for its demerger. The graphite electrodes business will move to HEG Graphite, which is proposed to be later renamed to HEG and run as a pure-play graphite electrodes company. The existing listed company will retain the advanced materials, battery energy solutions and green power businesses. It is proposed to be renamed HEG Advanced Materials after the demerger.

What does this mean for HEG shareholders?

As part of the demerger, HEG shareholders will receive one share with a face value of Rs 2 each in the company being spun off for every share they hold in the existing HEG. This means the demerger ratio has been fixed at 1:1.
For example, an investor who holds 10 shares of HEG as on the record date will, after the demerger takes effect, hold 10 shares of HEG and 10 shares of HEG Advanced Materials. Only shareholders who hold HEG shares in their demat accounts as on the record date will be eligible to receive shares in the new company as part of the demerger.

As part of the same scheme, Bhilwara Energy will be amalgamated into HEG. Under the arrangement, HEG will issue eight equity shares with a face value of Rs 2 each for every seven equity shares with a face value of Rs 10 each held in Bhilwara Energy. It is important to note that Bhilwara Energy is an unlisted company.
Also read | HEG demerger: What 1:1 restructuring means for shareholders as company fixes record date?

Leadership changes at HEG

Along with the record date for the demerger, HEG last month also announced leadership changes that took effect from September 1. Ravi Jhunjhunwala will continue to lead HEG Graphite as Chairman, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. He will also remain on the board of HEG Advanced Materials in a non-executive capacity.

Riju Jhunjhunwala has been elevated as Chairman, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of HEG Advanced Materials for a five-year term, subject to shareholder approval.

“Our immediate focus includes scaling synthetic graphite anode material, where we are developing commercial scale manufacturing capability, while continuing to advance graphene and its applications across industries. At the same time, we will continue to invest in research and build the capabilities required to take promising materials from scientific possibility towards industrial scale. Our ambition is to build HEG Advanced Materials into a globally competitive advanced materials company, one known for the depth of its science, the quality of its execution and the responsibility with which it builds for the long term,” said Riju Jhunjhunwala.

Also read | Festive stock picks: 10 stocks to buy ahead of the festive season. Do you own any?

Disclosure: This article has been written by Debaroti Adhikary, who is not a SEBI-registered Research Analyst or an investment advisor. Debaroti Adhikary does not hold any financial interest in the company named in the article as of the date of publication. The views/recommendations mentioned in this article, wherever applicable, are those of the respective SEBI-registered Research Analyst/brokerage and have been reproduced/reported with due attribution. They should not be construed as the views or recommendations of the EconomicTimes Digital or the journalist. Readers are advised to consider the original research report and make their investment decisions based on their own assessment.

Shares of Indian IT companies including Infosys, HCLTech, TCS, Wipro and others dropped up to 3% on Monday as stronger-than-expected US jobs growth data boosted bets of a September interest rate hike by the Federal Reserve.

The Nifty IT index dropped over 2% to trade at 30,082 on Monday, leading losses among all the major sectoral indices on the stock market. Infosys, LTI Mindtree and Mphasis shares dropped around 3% each, while those of Tech Mahindra, OFSS, Coforge, HCL Technologies, Wipro, Persistent Systems and TCS fell 1-2%.

US job growth accelerated sharply in August while the unemployment rate remained steady at 4.1%, implying an improvement in the labour market after recent struggles, data released on Friday showed. US nonfarm payrolls increased by 1.62 lakh in August, well above economists’ expectations of a gain of 56,000.

The sharp growth boosted hopes for a rate hike by the Federal Reserve in September, with traders now pricing in approximately 57% chance of a rate increase this month. Higher US rates could curb client spending, weighing on Indian IT firms that generate a significant share of their revenue ⁠from the ‌United States.

Also read | Is AI boom hiding growing US risks? Nomura warns dollar asset concentration leaves global markets vulnerable to AI shocks

What lies ahead for IT stocks?

IT stocks on Dalal Street have seen sharp upswings and downswings recently. Earlier this year, the sector witnessed a sharp selloff after breakthroughs by AI startups fuelled concerns about potential disruption to the traditional IT services business model. Later, a sharp selloff in global tech leaders proved to be a blessing in disguise for Indian IT stocks, which emerged resilient amid the global tech rout.
HSBC said India can serve as an “anti-AI” diversifier as sharp swings in technology-exposed markets encourage foreign investors to broaden their portfolios. HSBC strategists Prerna Garg, Herald van der Linde and Yogesh Aggarwal said in a report that AI-rotation outflows from India have “largely played out.”While AI jitters continue to keep IT investors on the edge, CLSA downgraded several heavyweight stocks and revised their target prices, although it remains bullish on several mid-tier IT vendors.

Indian IT has gone through a near three-year spending recession, on the back of weak discretionary budgets, elongated deal cycles, H-1B headwinds, AI driven revenue deflation and a selloff triggered by fears that agentic tooling (Claude Cowork, COBOL modernisation) would automate the legacy stack directly, Anand Rathi said in August. However, it thinks that fear inverts the actual set-up.

“Our core thesis is that the AI cycle is pivoting from “building capacity” to “proving payback“ — a transition that is inherently services-heavy and plays squarely to Indian IT’s strengths in deployment, integration, governance and legacy modernisation. Value is migrating from the layer that funds the AI build to the layer that deploys it: first to the enterprise software platforms — Systems of Record and Systems of Action that hold the data, permissions and approvals — then to the services firms that integrate and run them. This is the cloud playbook rerun: capex builds first and the returns arrive later, to different players, as railways, fibre and the 2015-19 cloud J-curve all showed,” it added.

The brokerage feels near-term weakness is real, due to AI-led pricing deflation compounded by geopolitics. But AI is expanding the TAM, not compressing it, opening deployment, AI FinOps, governance, managed agent operations, legacy modernisation, sovereign AI and SLM pools, it said. “Indian IT offers this without the balance-sheet and funding-duration risk the infra layer carries — the “safe AI” trade,” it added.

Also read | Bigger market crash ahead? Analysts weigh how Sensex, Nifty may react if US 10-year bond yield touches 5%

(With inputs from agencies)

Disclosure: This article has been written by Debaroti Adhikary, who is not a SEBI-registered Research Analyst or an investment advisor. Debaroti Adhikary does not hold any financial interest in the company named in the article as of the date of publication. The views/recommendations mentioned in this article, wherever applicable, are those of the respective SEBI-registered Research Analyst/brokerage and have been reproduced/reported with due attribution. They should not be construed as the views or recommendations of the EconomicTimes Digital or the journalist. Readers are advised to consider the original research report and make their investment decisions based on their own assessment.

SAN FRANCISCO — Top Uber executives are predicting that private car ownership and driver’s licenses will become largely obsolete within the next 15 to 20 years, as autonomous vehicles, bikes, scooters and public transit reshape how Americans get around, a vision that echoes similar long-term predictions from Tesla CEO Elon Musk about the future of driving.

Uber President and Chief Operating Officer Andrew Macdonald outlined the prediction during a recent appearance on entrepreneur Harry Stebbings’ 20VC podcast, describing a future in which car ownership becomes an increasingly rare choice rather than a default necessity.

“In some future world, maybe not five years, but 15 or 20 years, everyone’s going to be like Harry — nobody’s going to own a car,” Macdonald said, referring to podcast host Stebbings. “Nobody’s going to have their driver’s license because you’ll be able to get around. And I think bikes and scooters will be part of that. I think autonomous vehicles will be part of that. I think public transportation will be a big part of that, but I don’t think you need to own a car.”

Macdonald was particularly critical of the economics behind personal vehicle ownership, describing the private automobile in stark terms.

“The most inefficient asset that anyone owns,” Macdonald said of the personal car, noting that a typical vehicle sits idle roughly 98% of the day while continuing to depreciate and generate ongoing insurance costs even when parked in a driveway. He pointed to rising vehicle costs as compounding the inefficiency, noting that new vehicle prices have climbed roughly 30% over the past six years, with the average transaction price now hovering near $50,000.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has offered a similarly ambitious timeline for the shift toward autonomous, shared transportation. Speaking on “The Diary of a CEO” podcast earlier this year, Khosrowshahi described a future increasingly dominated by robot-driven rides.

“You can imagine the majority of our trips being fulfilled by robots of some kind,” Khosrowshahi said. “Probably not 10 years from now, but you go 15 to 20 years from now, you’re going to start getting there.”

Khosrowshahi has separately detailed how he expects vehicle ownership structures to shift during that transition, describing a future in which large institutional investors, rather than individual drivers, own the underlying autonomous vehicle fleets. He suggested major financial firms could eventually own large fleets of self-driving cars generating steady investment yields, comparing the model to how firms such as Blackstone currently manage other large asset portfolios. Khosrowshahi has acknowledged, however, that the transition raises difficult unresolved questions, including how displaced human drivers will be affected.

“I think 10-15 years from now this is going to be a real issue and I don’t have a neat answer for it,” Khosrowshahi has said regarding the broader disruption autonomous vehicles could bring to the ride-hailing workforce.

Speaking separately at the Semafor World Economy Summit in Washington, D.C., Khosrowshahi framed the eventual dominance of autonomous vehicles as effectively inevitable given the safety case for removing human error from driving.

“If you fast-forward 15, 20 years, I think eventually the cars are going to be autonomous,” Khosrowshahi said. “There’s very strong evidence to believe that robot drivers are going to be safer than human drivers.” He identified California and Texas as currently the most open regulatory markets for expanding autonomous ride-hailing services.

Elon Musk has voiced comparable predictions about the long-term trajectory of autonomous driving technology, dating back several years. Speaking during a Tesla earnings call, Musk said he expects “all cars will go fully autonomous in the long-term,” predicting it would eventually become “quite unusual to see cars that don’t have full autonomy” within a similar 15-to-20-year window, with Tesla vehicles specifically reaching that point even sooner than the broader industry.

Musk has also offered a broader, more sweeping vision of how automation and artificial intelligence could reshape the economics of daily life more generally, extending well beyond transportation. Speaking earlier this year at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum, Musk suggested that traditional employment could eventually become optional for most people as AI-driven productivity gains generate what he described as unprecedented material abundance.

“My prediction is that work will be optional,” Musk said. “It’ll be like playing sports or a video game or something like that. If you want to work, it’s the same way you can go to the store and just buy some vegetables, or you can grow vegetables in your backyard. It’s much harder to grow vegetables in your backyard, and some people still do it because they like growing vegetables.”

The convergence of predictions from Uber’s leadership and Musk reflects a broader alignment among major technology executives around the eventual dominance of autonomous vehicle technology, even as the specific business models and ownership structures each company envisions differ somewhat in their details. Uber has continued expanding its own autonomous vehicle partnerships in the meantime, reportedly working with roughly 20 different autonomous vehicle partners and aiming to operate driverless vehicles across 15 cities by the end of the year. Khosrowshahi has said Uber aims to facilitate more autonomous and robotaxi rides than any other company in the world by 2029.

In the near term, Uber has taken incremental steps toward that longer-term vision, including compensating some human drivers to help train the artificial intelligence systems expected to eventually power its autonomous fleets. Rival ride-hailing company Lyft has adopted a similar approach, paying some former drivers to maintain and clean self-driving vehicles as those vehicles gradually take on a larger share of rides previously handled by human drivers.

Despite the confident long-term predictions from Uber’s leadership and Musk alike, both companies have acknowledged that significant technical, regulatory and workforce-related challenges remain before autonomous vehicles can realistically displace private car ownership and human-driven ride-hailing at the scale envisioned. Whether the 15-to-20-year timeline offered by Macdonald, Khosrowshahi and Musk ultimately proves accurate remains to be seen, though the shared conviction among leaders at two of the industry’s most influential companies suggests the broader shift toward autonomous, shared mobility is likely to remain a defining storyline across the transportation and technology sectors in the years ahead.

LONDON — Prince William and Princess Kate are entering a pivotal new season determined not to let Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s return to Britain distract them from their own path forward, according to royal insiders, even as the Sussexes’ presence in the country promises to complicate the family’s public calendar in the months ahead.

The comments come as William and Kate say a poignant farewell to Prince George this week, marking his first day at Eton College, the prestigious Berkshire boarding school William himself attended as a teenager. The milestone arrives alongside what royal sources describe as a broader shift for the couple, who appear more united than ever as they resume official duties following their summer break, and just weeks after Harry and Meghan’s unexpected return to the U.K.

Robert Jobson, author of “The Windsor Legacy,” told Hello! that William and Kate remain firmly focused on their long-term trajectory rather than reacting to developments involving the Sussexes.

“They are on a clear path and they’re thinking about what their future is going to be,” Jobson said. “They’re focused on the kids and their projects. They are on a steady path which leads to the ultimate job, the top job. Now they’re next in line, they’re facing what their position will be, and that will be essentially to prepare the reign that they want and how they want to do it. William will take the lead, but it’s going to be a team effort.”

Jobson pointed to the couple’s public unity as evidence of their strengthened partnership.

“I think they’re certainly stronger as a couple, but also as a family unit,” Jobson said. “You only have to look at them in public; they are very much a united couple and they’re very much doing their job. They really haven’t put a foot wrong. The way that Catherine has come back into the public eye was perfectly handled. They’ve got their image right, they’ve got their engagement at the level they want and they’re spending enough time with their kids.”

Addressing the Sussexes’ return directly, Jobson said he does not expect it to change William and Kate’s approach.

“I don’t think that, because Harry and Meghan are here making a bit of noise, that’s going to necessarily make them do anything,” Jobson said. “They’ll probably think, well, we’ve been down this road before; it creates a circus and we’re not going to get involved.”

Still, Harry and Meghan’s presence will be difficult to entirely avoid. The couple, believed to be living in the Cotswolds, flew into Birmingham last month in time for their children, Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5, to begin school. William and Kate have their own busy autumn schedule of engagements planned, including William’s continued work on homelessness and mental health and Kate’s focus on young children and families, while Harry is expected to appear in London later this month at the WellChild Awards, an annual charity event for seriously ill children of which he remains patron.

Hello! royal editor Emily Nash said Meghan’s specific plans remain the more uncertain variable in the equation.

“What really fascinates me is what Meghan is going to do,” Nash said. “She’s essentially a private citizen here in the UK. Will she pop up with or for Harry? If she does, does that make it look more like they’re sort of imitating royal engagements? I think this could become a bit of a problem for them.”

Nash also flagged conflicting reports about Meghan’s potential return to acting, after British actor Theo James dismissed rumors that Meghan would join the third season of the Netflix series “The Gentlemen,” in which he stars, calling the speculation “hot air.”

“The other thing that I found fascinating was Theo James saying that all the rumours around her starring in The Gentlemen are hot air,” Nash said. “That whole sort of PR bombshell about her returning to acting very specifically linked her to that production in particular, and now, people at the heart of it are saying it’s not right. What is going on there?”

Based on her own sourcing, Nash said she expects Meghan to largely continue her existing pattern of activity.

“From the people I’ve been speaking to, I think Meghan’s plan is to carry on doing what she’s been doing,” Nash said. “I’m sure they’re working on some of the things they were doing with Archewell Philanthropies — the work she was doing around online harm, for example, I’m sure we’ll see more of that kind of thing. But do they really want to return to the kind of engagements that they turned their back on? And if they do, how are people going to react to it?”

Meghan is also continuing to build her lifestyle brand, As Ever, and remains patron of Smart Works, a U.K.-wide charity offering coaching and clothing to unemployed women and those on zero-hours contracts. Smart Works told Hello! it is “very excited to welcome the Duchess and her family back to the UK.”

One date likely to underscore the ongoing divisions within the family is the National Service of Remembrance on Nov. 8, when senior royals traditionally gather at the Cenotaph in central London. Having stepped down as working royals in 2020, Harry and Meghan will not be invited to join King Charles and other relatives at the official service, though Harry may choose to mark the occasion elsewhere, as he has done in Los Angeles in past years.

Jobson said any separate observance by Harry would risk highlighting the rift rather than easing it.

“That’s a problem, because if Harry goes somewhere in Oxford and does it, it’s going to look very odd, because it’s going to be an alternative moment,” Jobson said. “As a veteran, he will probably want to do that, so unless they invite them into the fold, which I don’t think they will at this moment in time, it creates an alternative which makes them look divided. You’ve got two conflicting households on the same patch, and that can’t possibly work. I think something has to give along the way. It’s whether they invite Harry back inside, and if that’s the case, then a lot of people won’t be very happy.”

Questions also remain over whether Harry and Meghan will be invited to Kate’s annual Together at Christmas carol concert at Westminster Abbey, or to join the wider family for festive celebrations at Sandringham.

For William and Kate, Jobson said the pair are more likely to stay focused on their own upcoming milestones, including a potential state dinner next month for the Sultan of Oman’s visit to the U.K., hosted by the King and Queen. There is also renewed talk of Kate rejoining William for international travel, with speculation she could accompany him to Mumbai in November for the Earthshot Prize Summit and Awards, which would mark their first major joint overseas trip since visiting the Caribbean in 2022, and Kate’s first appearance at one of William’s environmental events since Boston that same year.

“I think if she’s well enough to go, she will go,” Jobson said. “All the indications are that she probably will. It’s about time that she did.”

Jobson said he ultimately expects William and Kate to rise above any distraction posed by the Sussexes’ return.

“I think they’re going to rise above all this,” Jobson said. “I don’t think they’re going to be involved in a tit for tat. Harry has turned up and put the ball back in their court, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to play.”