The chancellor is to warn the European Union (EU) not to lock the UK out of its scheme to protect industries from unfair Chinese competition.

John Healey will push for closer UK-EU partnerships on tech, defence, and manufacturing at a meeting of EU finance ministers in Dublin on Friday.

But he will call on the EU to design its “Made in Europe” programme in a way that deepens ties with the UK “rather than erecting new barriers”, Treasury sources told the BBC.

Officials said Healey will tell European finance ministers it is important to “learn lessons” after talks collapsed last year for Britain to join an EU defence loans scheme.

That dispute centred on how much money the UK would pay to join.

The “Made in Europe” policy, officially called the Industrial Accelerator Act (IAA), is currently being considered by the bloc and aims to protect EU manufacturing with restrictions on goods from outside countries.

There is concern in government the scheme could lock British firms out of European supply chains.

Treasury officials said Healey wanted to reduce the economic impact of Brexit and build closer ties with the EU, but not at any cost to the UK.

Healey said: “The next chapter of Britain’s growth story will be written in more places.

“To me, closer ties with the EU means British businesses – wherever they are based across the UK – get better access to both the supply chains and the customers they need to grow.”

Healey will use the meeting in Dublin to focus on tech firms, defence companies, and manufacturing.

“The chancellor wants to make sure nothing holds them back,” a Treasury source said.

It comes after a reset summit with the EU was delayed after Sir Keir Starmer’s resignation as prime minister.

Treasury sources now expect that to take place in November.

Healey’s meeting in Dublin comes after it emerged earlier this week that he is in discussions about joining a global investment bank aimed at raising more money for defence spending.

He is considering a bid to join the Defence, Security and Resilience Bank (DSRB), not long after his predecessor Rachel Reeves rejected the idea.

Canada has been leading efforts to establish the bank, which supporters say would enable governments to borrow at lower costs to increase military spending.

Paying for the UK’s growing defence commitments is one of Healey’s biggest headaches as he prepares for the Budget in October and next year’s spending review.

American homeowners expecting peak-market valuations are confronting a changing real estate landscape following the Federal Reserve’s latest interest rate decision.

Rising borrowing costs are shrinking the pool of qualified buyers, signaling a potential wave of price reductions for sellers seeking to close deals before year-end, real estate insiders told Fox News Digital.

“Sellers have… very high expectations. And it takes a while for sellers’ expectations to come down. And that’s the reality,” DaGrosa Capital Partners founder and chairman Joe DaGrosa told Fox News Digital. “With respect to buyers, I think a lot of people are going to have to wait it out. And wait and see a better situation on the mortgage front… [there’s] going to be some pressure. So I think it’s going to be tough on buyers and it’s going to be tough on sellers.”

“Fewer buyers equals fewer opportunities to sell the home, less competitive environment. And so as a result, we’re seeing a lot of sellers struggling to sell their homes in a market that otherwise would be a pretty strong market,” Bowers Group Vice President at Compass Brett Rubin also said.

RYAN SERHANT REVEALS WHAT’S MISSING FROM AMERICA’S MIGRATION STORY: ‘STEALTH’ STATES BEATING FLORIDA, TEXAS

“And with that, we’re starting to see homes sitting on the market a little bit longer, a lot more price reductions, hesitant buyers kind of sitting on their sidelines. And so this rate hike definitely has implications on both sides of the spectrum.”

Federal Reserve policymakers voted 12-0 on Wednesday to raise the target range for the federal funds rate from 3.5%-3.75% to 3.75%-4%. The 25-basis-point increase marked the first interest rate hike since July 2023 and came after the Fed left rates unchanged at its first five meetings this year.

The average rate on a 30-year fixed refinance increased to 7.14% from 6.87% a week earlier, while the average 15-year fixed refinance rate was 6.30% Thursday, according to the Mortgage Research Center.

“The retail market sellers are going to realize that they’ve probably experienced 40%, 50% appreciation of their property values over the past 8 to 10 years… I think they’re going to have to recognize that they’re going to take a little bit of a hit if they want to sell,” DaGrosa said. “And homebuilder sentiment is at its lowest in the past 12 months. It may get worse before it gets better. So you’re seeing a double whammy for homebuilds, which is their cost of building homes has gone up.”

“Some folks who need to sell their homes, they’re full steam ahead as well, and they’re just going to have to weather the storm for better or for worse,” Rubin added. “Ultimately, if they need to reduce the price, that might be in the cards for them.”

“I can see there being a correlation between, you know, rates increasing and home values decreasing. But I think it needs to be a really consistent increase over an extended period of time to really affect the market in that way,” Rubin continued.

Millions of American homeowners remain reluctant to move because they hold mortgage rates below 4%, contributing to the so-called mortgage-rate lock-in effect. Sellers who need to move because of job relocations or life changes can face reluctant buyers and higher borrowing costs, the experts said.

“I think it’s going to be a buyer’s market in a few months, and if I were a buyer, I’d be in no rush to buy because I think there’ll be relief from sellers. But for now, we’re going to have a frozen market. I’ve seen this multiple times over the past 40 years,” DaGrosa said.

“We use the term ‘golden handcuffs.’ The folks who have interest rates in the 3%, 4% range, they’re not as incentivized to make that move and take on a larger mortgage payment with a higher interest rate. And so they’re definitely going to be reconsidering that move if it’s not something that’s absolutely imperative,” Rubin explained. “So while there’s some truth to that, in the sense that folks who are comfortable are probably not going to move just because they feel like moving, there’s always going to be folks who are buying and selling out of necessity. And unfortunately for those folks, they’re going to have to weather the storm, whether they are encouraged by the rate environment or not.”

As market inventory sits and seasonal slowdowns compound high interest rates, DaGrosa and Rubin anticipate a leverage shift. Sellers who delay price concessions may find themselves competing for a diminishing pool of qualified buyers, signaling that patient buyers may soon hold the bargaining power in upcoming sales cycles.

“For the average American, my view is there are going to be good deals coming over time,” DaGrosa noted.

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“I’m feeling like there will be a slowdown,” Rubin admitted. “So while we might not immediately realize what those effects are looking like at the moment, the spring market will certainly be more telling.”

“It’s the Wild West in real estate, and that’s just sort of the norm, unfortunately,” he added. “The sooner that folks realize that there is no kind of standard market anymore, the sooner that they’re going to realize that this is what it is.”

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FOX Business’ Eric Revell contributed to this report.

Mumbai: The central bank’s first open market operation (OMO) sale of the year saw a stronger-than-expected response, with market participants placing bids worth ₹66,590 crore against the notified amount of ₹50,000 crore. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) accepted bonds at yields higher than prevailing market levels, seeking to suck out excess liquidity.

Higher yields suggest a premium demanded from the investors. The OMO comes ahead of ₹28,000 crore weekly bond auction scheduled Friday by the RBI.

The 8.28% GS 2032 was the most in demand, with market participants bidding the highest at ₹19,700 crore, while the five-year 6.68% GS 2031 paper garnered bids of ₹7,970 crore.

“The yields were slightly higher than prevailing market levels and expectations, but the OMO was well subscribed. Since the sale was fully subscribed, it did not lead to any significant negative reaction in yields,” said Alok Singh, head of treasury at CSB Bank.
Read more: Paytm karo, back in vogue again: Can the stock reclaim IPO price after 5 years and 480% rally?

For example, the yield of the five-year paper closed at 6.78% on Thursday, while the cut off yield in the OMO was 6.90%.
The 6.79% GS 2029 three-year paper was taken at a cutoff yield of 6.70%, while it closed at 6.66%.The RBI is conducting OMOs to absorb surplus system liquidity and align the weighted average call rate (WACR) with the policy rate. Selling securities in the OMO is one of the measures the central bank uses to drain excess liquidity in the banking system.

Read more: Retail investors pull Rs 5,674 crore from stocks, invest Rs 12,618 crore into IPOs in July-August

Overall liquidity now stands at ₹7.37 lakh crore on September 16, while the next OMO sale of ₹25,000 crore will take place on September 21. The WACR is at 5.05%, and has been below the 5.25% policy repo rate since late July. The RBI will also conduct a 3-day variable rate reverse repo (VRRR) operation for ₹2.25 lakh crore on Friday.

A Waymo vehicle struggled to navigate a flooded street in Phoenix this month, becoming stuck for more than 10 minutes in an “AI loop,” according to witnesses.

The car was filmed as it hesitantly moved back and forth, at one point almost backing into another car.

WAYMO GETS REGULATORY APPROVAL TO SCALE UP ROBOTAXI SERVICE ACROSS CALIFORNIA, ENTER 2 NEW MARKETS

“There were actually two Waymos holding up traffic,” said Roger Pelkey, who captured the incident on video. “The one further up finally made it through. This one was stuck in an AI loop and frustrating drivers.”

The video shows the vehicle continually moving slightly forward before backing up, as other vehicles with human drivers went around.

WAYMO RECALLS NEARLY 4,000 ROBOTAXIS AFTER CARS ENTER FREEWAY WORK ZONES

In May, Waymo suspended its driverless taxi operations across multiple cities — including Atlanta, San Antonio, Austin, Houston and Dallas — due to repeated incidents involving floodwaters.

The vehicles encountered severe weather and drove into submerged streets, with some becoming stranded or stuck in floodwaters.

Earlier this month, the company brought its driverless robotaxi service to Denver, San Diego and Tampa, expanding its fully autonomous ride-hailing service to 14 cities.

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FOX Business has reached out to Waymo for comment.

Rika Antonova has been working in the field of robotics since 2015 and is currently an associate professor at the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge.

Her research is focused on, external developing software and hardware that can aid robots to learn complex behaviour.

Antonova works with a training system called MuJoCo, owned by Google’s DeepMind since 2021. It’s open-source software, which means researchers can use it for free, and are allowed to tinker with the code.

“It is very, very user-friendly. So for research groups or for small start-ups, that’s useful,” she says.

She says that Vsim’s approach – very fast simulation – is promising.

“If you have a very, very fast simulator, then you can simulate hundreds of millions of samples in that few seconds that your robot is thinking about how to adjust its motion, and then you can change the motion almost in real time,” she says.

But those simulated environments are still rough approximations of the real world, which limits what can be trained.

“There are certain things that are hard to model in simulation, like highly deformable objects and cutting,” she says.

It’s a challenge that Nvidia and Lu and Storey at Vsim are working on.

Lu says their system has “reduced approximation, using accurate simulations to train models that genuinely work in reality as well as they do in simulations.”

Soon a second robot, to be called Nacho, will be helping develop that tech.

Lu says that should speed up their development process and ensure their software can run on different machines.

And, of course, provide Freddo with some company.

Mumbai: Shares of Tata Group companies with minority stakes in Tata Sons rose on Thursday after the holding company’s board approved a fresh five-year term for N Chandrasekaran as executive chairman and resolved to initiate steps to comply with applicable RBI guidelines, including those related to a potential listing of Tata Sons.

Tata Chemicals closed 6% higher, Tata Investment Corp gained 5.5%, Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles rose 4.5% and Tata Steel gained 3%. Indian Hotels and Tata Power climbed around 2% higher. The board decision, however, has opened a fresh front in the ongoing differences between Tata Sons and Tata Trusts. Tata Trusts said the resolution to reappoint Chandrasekaran was a “legal nullity”, with Tata Trusts Chairman Noel N Tata voting against the resolution at the Tata Sons board meeting. Four directors voted in favour, according to the Trusts.

Tata Trusts is the majority owner of Tata Sons, in which the Shapoorji Pallonji Group also owns a significant minority stake of more than 18%.

The Tata Sons board approved the fresh five-year term after Chandrasekaran had decided in August not to seek another term when his current tenure ends on February 20, 2027.

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The board also resolved to initiate steps to comply with applicable RBI guidelines and seek guidance from the RBI, Tata Trusts and other stakeholders on the applicable compliance requirements. “For Tata Group stocks, the five-year extension provides leadership continuity and reduces near-term succession uncertainty, which could support investor confidence. For the SP Group, the impact is more indirect, as continued Chandra leadership and the Tata Sons listing process could provide greater clarity around its stake,” said Ravi Singh, chief research officer, Master Capital Services.
“However, Tata Trusts’ challenge may create near-term governance uncertainty. In our view, the development is broadly supportive for Tata Group stocks, while SP Group could benefit if the listing process progresses smoothly,” he said.Read more: Retail investors pull Rs 5,674 crore from stocks, invest Rs 12,618 crore into IPOs in July-August

A potential listing of Tata Sons could benefit Tata Chemicals, Tata Steel and Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles most directly, as they own 2.5-3.1% stakes in the holding company. Tata Chemicals’ 2.5% stake is estimated at around ₹25,300 crore, while Tata Steel and Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles each hold 3.1% stakes worth around ₹30,600 crore. Shares of Shapoorji Pallonji Group companies also gained. Gokak Textiles rose 9% and Afcons Infrastructure gained 3.3%, while Forbes & Co and Eureka Forbes closed marginally lower. The SP Group owns an estimated 18.37% of Tata Sons, and a potential listing could provide the debt-laden group a liquid route to monetise its stake.

Tata Sons could be valued at about ₹12.5 lakh crore, according to calculations cited by Deven Choksey, managing director at DRChoksey FinServ. At that valuation, the 11.94% stake held by seven listed Tata Group companies would be worth around ₹1.49 lakh crore. However, the differences between Tata Trusts and Tata Sons could delay some of the group’s future plans, particularly projects involving large capital expenditure and requiring Tata Trusts’ consent, said Vinod Nair, Head of Research, Geojit Investments.

“The continuation of Chandra suggests a relief for both the groups, Tata and SP, with a plan to proceed with the future listing of Tata Sons leading to unlocking of value for the shareholders. However, the boost could be short-lived, especially for the Tata group, if the differences continue to delay the future growth and smooth working of the group in the medium to long term,” Nair said.