Economy
VW suspends work on electric Golf viewed as flagship future model
Volkswagen is suspending development work on the all-electric Golf at its Wolfsburg headquarters, as sweeping cost cuts at the embattled automaker reach one of its flagship future models.
“I know what the Golf means for Volkswagen and for Wolfsburg. That’s why this decision was really not an easy one for us,” said Thomas Schaefer, CEO of the German group’s volume brands, in a memo reported by Reuters on Friday.
“We simply can’t afford this work right now,” he added.
The move highlights the financial pressure facing Europe’s biggest carmaker as it pushes ahead with plans to cut 100,000 jobs and close up to four German plants.
Volkswagen on Thursday reported its largest quarterly loss in more than a decade and renewed calls for stakeholders, including powerful labor unions, to back the restructuring program.
Wolfsburg, a towering plant in the group’s industrial heartland of Lower Saxony and a symbol of Germany’s automaking heritage, faces a 300 million euro ($336 million) shortfall against its cost-cutting target, according to the memo.
The plant is not among those threatened with closure, but Volkswagen’s German operations are under growing pressure to reduce costs.
Tensions have escalated with union IG Metall, which is considering strikes from Jan. 1.
Workers’ anger has also been fueled by a decision at the group’s Audi brand to invest $4 billion in a new U.S. plant, announced at a campaign event for President Donald Trump before receiving board approval.
Volkswagen’s works council said suspending development work on the ID. Golf would not delay the model’s launch and pledged to make up the lost time.
“However, the freeze on spending for preliminary work on the ID. Golf is yet another sign of how strained the group’s financial situation is,” the works council said in an emailed statement shared with Reuters.
The ID. Golf is one of the first vehicles planned for Volkswagen’s next-generation SSP software architecture, a group-wide platform designed to reduce complexity and lower production costs.
Already delayed from an original 2026 launch target, the platform is central to Volkswagen’s efforts to build more competitive EVs as Chinese rivals expand in Europe.
Türkiye’s tourism revenues reached a record high for both the third quarter and the first nine months of the year, Culture and Tourism Minister Mehmet Nuri Ersoy said Friday.
Income rose 5% year-over-year to $25.5 billion (TL 1.28 trillion) in the July-September period, while it climbed 2.4% to nearly $51.3 billion in the first nine months, Ersoy told a news conference on the sector’s performance.
Ersoy said Türkiye was on track to generate more than $65 billion in full-year tourism revenues.
“Longer-than-expected average stays and higher overnight spending have boosted tourism revenues,” he noted.
The number of visitors fell 1% year-over-year to 23.37 million in the third quarter, while total arrivals reached 49.13 million in the January-September period, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) data showed.
Separately, data from the Tourism Ministry showed that the number of foreign visitors rose 0.4% year-over-year to 6.11 million in September. However, foreign arrivals fell 1.52% to 40.93 million in the first nine months of the year.
Russians accounted for the largest group of foreign visitors in September, with 979,647 arrivals, followed by visitors from Germany, Britain, Iran and Poland.
Revenue generated directly from visitors amounted to $25.29 billion in the July-September quarter, while transit passenger income contributed $231.96 million, the TurkStat data showed.
Turkish citizens residing abroad accounted for 14% of total revenue.
Individual expenditures made up $17.1 billion of the total, while package tour spending stood at $8.2 billion.
Average visitor stays stood at 10.34 nights in the first nine months and 10.69 nights in the third quarter.
Average spending per night rose 4.6% year-over-year to $107.70 in the nine months, with foreign tourists spending an average of $119.90.
Tourism expenditure, consisting of spending by Turkish residents traveling abroad, surged 22.6% year-over-year to over $3 billion in the third quarter.
Individual spending totaled $2.57 billion, while package tour expenses accounted for $467.64 million.
The number of Turkish residents traveling abroad increased 24.2% year-over-year to 4.2 million, with an average expenditure of $723 per person.
Warning of risks
Ersoy said average visitor stays continued to exceed expectations, but warned of risks to the sector in the final quarter, including a possible escalation of the Iran war and its spillover into Saudi Arabia, as well as an increase in drone attacks on cities amid the Russia-Ukraine war.
He noted that regional conflicts, airspace restrictions and rising energy prices have driven up aviation costs and pressured international travel demand throughout the year.
“While all these negative developments are occurring in our region, Türkiye stands out as an island of stability through its strong state structure, diplomatic capacity and efforts for peace and stability led by our president,” Ersoy said.
“When activity slows in one market, we can intensify our efforts in other markets and replan our promotional and marketing activities according to developments,” he added.
Looking ahead, Ersoy stated that Türkiye will intensify efforts in high-growth-potential markets, including the U.S., Canada, Asia, Africa and Australia, while expanding direct flight capacity in partnership with Turkish Airlines and tour operators.
He also emphasized that the ministry will make more effective use of data and artificial intelligence (AI) applications to monitor market demand, visitor preferences and campaign results.
Türkiye welcomed a record 52.78 million foreign tourists last year, according to official data. Combined with Turkish citizens living abroad, the count rose to a new all-time high of 63.94 million.
In 2025, revenues increased by 6.8% from the previous year to a record $65.2 billion, surpassing the government’s Medium-Term Program (OVP) target of $64 billion. Before the Iran war began, the target for this year was $68 billion.
Lower revenues could add to Türkiye’s current account deficit, which is already under pressure from soaring energy prices due to the fallout from the Iran war.
The war has hurt demand for travel to Türkiye’s historic sites and Mediterranean beaches.
Tourism is a vital industry that Türkiye relies on to help flip its chronic current account deficit to a surplus.
The sector contributes about 10% to Türkiye’s gross domestic product (GDP) and accounts for about 5% of total employment.
Doğuş Otomotiv said Friday it had signed a letter of intent with Volkswagen to evaluate options for producing the German automaker’s passenger cars in Türkiye.
The automotive distributor, which is Türkiye’s longtime importer of Volkswagen cars, announced the step in a filing with the Public Disclosure Platform (KAP).
“A letter of intent has been signed between our company and Volkswagen Group companies regarding the evaluation of options for producing Volkswagen-brand passenger cars in Türkiye,” the filing said.
The move does not mean Volkswagen will begin producing in Türkiye. It is a preliminary step toward assessing production possibilities, and whether a final decision on production will follow will become clear later.
Volkswagen had abandoned plans for a factory in Türkiye in 2020, citing the COVID-19 pandemic and global economic developments.
The partnership aims to offer value-added products suited to new technologies in the Turkish market and contribute to growth in the Turkish auto industry, Doğuş said.
A serious passenger car production partnership could have a significant long-term impact on Doğuş, Ata Yatırım analyst Cemal Demirtaş said
The company did not say where production could take place, which Volkswagen models it might cover, how large an investment would be involved, or what the timeline might be.
Shares of Doğuş Otomotiv rose 10% in morning trade, on track for their biggest one-day jump since May 2025.
The eurozone economy grew faster than predicted last quarter, displaying exceptional resilience to headwinds from expensive energy, even as surging borrowing costs and rapid inflation cloud the outlook.
The eurozone economy has beaten most estimates this year, expanding steadily on the back of robust investment and consumption, confounding expectations for a downturn as energy price rises sap incomes.
The economies of the 21 nations sharing the euro grew by 0.4% in the third quarter, a slowdown from an exceptionally strong 0.6% three months earlier, but far above expectations for 0.2% in a Reuters poll of economists.
Compared with a year earlier, the bloc’s economy grew by 1.3%, beating expectations for 1.1%, as heavy spending on AI, defense and infrastructure boosted investment, robust foreign demand helped industry, and households kept on spending, reducing their already high savings rate.
Among the eurozone’s biggest economies, Germany expanded by 0.2% on the quarter, Spain and the Netherlands by 0.6%, while Italy was unchanged and the French economy contracted by 0.1%.
While the bloc’s growth rate is less than half of the expansion produced by the United States, the figure far exceeds the gloomy projections made after the start of the Iran war.
Europe is a net energy importer and oil price surges immediately reduce growth, compress corporate margins and worsen the bloc’s terms of trade.
Strength may not last
This strength may not last, however.
The European Central Bank (ECB) has warned that the balance of risks is tilted towards weaker readings as the recent surge in borrowing costs is bound to weaken the bloc.
Indeed, German borrowing costs – the bloc’s benchmark – surged to their highest in decades this month, partly mirroring similar moves in U.S. markets and partly on investor unease about debt sustainability around the world.
Meanwhile, the premium that eurozone countries need to pay to borrow has jumped, particularly for France, as investors doubt it will sort out its finances before next year’s presidential election.
Inflation is likely to add to this pain.
Price growth accelerated in most of the eurozone’s biggest countries this month, suggesting that annual inflation for the bloc as a whole could jump to 3.9% or above, far above the ECB’s 2% target.
Such a figure would solidify already widespread bets for another rate hike in December, a move that would further dampen growth.
An ECB survey published on Friday showed a big rise in inflation expectations and suggested that the rate of price growth may not return to target until 2028.
Fabio Panetta, Italy’s central bank governor, said further increases in policy rates could be needed.
Still, data suggest that high inflation is not yet generating dangerous second-round effects, likely because the labour market is relatively soft.
Unemployment was steady at 6.5% in August but has been inching up for most of the past year and now stands well above the record-low 6.2% hit in late 2024.
Hackers stole $6.3 billion from Binance, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, in a record theft that analysts pinned on North Korea and said could shake faith in digital assets.
Cryptocurrency prices fell on the news, while Binance halted withdrawals and said it would cover the losses. About half of the stolen assets were quickly frozen by stablecoin issuers such as Tether, Circle and the Trump-backed World Liberty Financial.
The bulk of the heist unfolded in around 20 minutes beginning late on Thursday and bore similarities to previous large attacks blamed on North Korea, according to US blockchain analysis firms TRM Labs and Chainalysis.
TRM said the attackers were able to order wallets that Binance uses to empty into hacker-controlled wallets, mirroring a 2025 heist at crypto exchange Bybit, which the US Federal Bureau of Investigation had attributed to Pyongyang.
“TRM attributes the attack to … North Korea’s elite hacking unit,” the firm said in an analysis of the hack posted to its website. Both TRM and Chainalysis said they were highly confident North Korea was responsible.
‘Biggest hack in history’
North Korea has for years used state-linked cyber units for espionage, financial theft and revenue, according to U.S. and South Korean authorities as well as cybersecurity experts.
North Korea routinely denies that.
Binance said user funds were safe and that it was working with partners to freeze some of the affected assets, with about $3 billion located so far. It expects to resume withdrawal services in the next 48 hours.
It did not mention the status of the remaining $3.3 billion.
“Your money is safe and we’re covering every loss,” co-CEO Richard Teng said on the social media platform X. “Our investigation has not attributed responsibility to any individual.”
“It’s the biggest hack in history,” Aravind Srinivasan at market maker GSR said as crypto prices fell broadly.
Bitcoin hit a six-week low of $76,368 and ether fell more than 3% to a two-month low of $2,178 before markets stabilized.
BNB, a token originally launched as Binance Coin that can be used to pay Binance fees, was down 5% over the past 24 hours at $709.70, according to CoinGecko, while shaky confidence hit listed crypto exchange shares.
Shares in crypto exchange Coinbase Global, which said it was unaffected, slid 4.8%, while those of bitcoin buyer Strategy fell nearly 6% in extended U.S. trading.
Compromised laptop
An initial investigation suggested the breach may have started with a hacked laptop belonging to one of Binance’s engineers, which let an attacker gain access to one of its systems and make unauthorized withdrawals, Binance said.
“Our security team is tracing the full attack path through the compromised computer which may be the entry point of the incident,” Binance said.
Mark Karpeles, former chief of defunct Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange Mt Gox, which collapsed a dozen years ago after $500 million in bitcoin was stolen, said attackers probably accessed private keys for at least two Binance wallets.
“Binance appears to have split its assets across multiple systems, ensuring a hack can only affect a part of the assets, but even so a single hack is a large loss,” he said.
Beyond the potential loss of assets, the security breach was likely to have wider ramifications for crypto, which had already been under pressure due to higher U.S. interest rates and softer demand from exchange-traded fund buyers, analysts said.
“It may further dampen risk appetite and prompt investors to reassess the safety of assets held on centralised exchanges,” said Tim Sun, senior researcher at HashKey Group, based in Hong Kong.
Hack size tops Binance secure asset fund
Binance, which allows users to buy, sell and trade digital assets, has 335 million registered users globally and had about $162.8 billion in assets under custody as of the exchange’s 2025 annual report.
The crypto exchange runs a secure asset fund for users, which is a $1 billion reserve held entirely in bitcoin that is intended to protect user assets in cases of security breaches, according to its website.
Co-CEO Teng said that “and company funds” will cover losses.
Stablecoin issuer Tether said it had frozen nearly $1.57 billion in assets linked to the incident, while Circle froze more than $800 million.
World Liberty Financial said it worked with custodian BitGo to freeze funds, and Binance co-founder Yi He said $27 million in stablecoins and about $2 million worth of World Liberty tokens had been frozen. Crypto firm Ripple also froze roughly $200 million in funds, Yi said.
The incident adds to a string of crypto thefts. Last year, attackers stole $2.9 billion worth of cryptocurrency across nearly 150 attacks, according to researchers at TRM Labs.
In September, cryptocurrency exchange Bitget said roughly $350 million in crypto had been stolen from its platform, underscoring the industry’s vulnerability to hackers.
U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that a Chinese executive with close ties to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was gathering information for Beijing, but President Donald Trump took no action after being briefed, a report said Thursday.
The executive, Alice Huang – no relation to the CEO – also known as Huang Le, held a senior position at Singapore-based data center company Megaspeed, which was already under investigation over suspicions it helped China circumvent U.S. restrictions on advanced artificial intelligence chips.
Electronic surveillance identified her as a Chinese intelligence asset and revealed her close relationship with Nvidia’s chief executive, The New York Times reported, citing people familiar with classified intelligence findings.
Trump was briefed roughly a year ago but chose not to act, the report said.
It remains unclear what information Huang provided to Beijing or whether she obtained sensitive Nvidia information.
The newspaper said Jensen Huang had not received a defensive briefing warning him of the potential intelligence threat.
Nvidia dismissed concerns about the relationship, saying interactions with Megaspeed were routine business dealings.
“Meetings with customers are part of a CEO’s job,” Nvidia spokesperson John Rizzo said, adding that the company had not shared sensitive trade secrets or national security information.
Megaspeed said it had hired outside counsel to investigate the allegations and pledged cooperation with U.S. authorities.
The Chinese Embassy in Washington dismissed the allegations as “groundless smears and slanders,” according to the newspaper.
U.S. authorities have investigated Megaspeed since late 2024 over suspected chip diversion, with the case transferred to the Justice Department earlier this year, the report said.
Rising oil and gas prices will leave many European Union citizens struggling to pay their bills this winter, though the bloc does not expect supply shortages, a senior official said Thursday.
“We do not expect the security of supply issue as such. But for the citizens that are struggling to pay the bills, that might not matter,” European Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen said.
With high prices, it does not really matter how much gas or oil there is available on the market, Jorgensen told reporters after participating in a meeting of the bloc’s energy ministers held in Luxembourg.
Ahead of the meeting, he said nearly 50 million Europeans cannot adequately heat their homes and warned that number could rise as the bloc heads into what he called an even worse energy crisis than the one it faced four years ago. But he warned EU countries against over-subsidizing fossil fuels.
“We’re better situated at dealing with this crisis than we were in 2022 because we’ve reduced our gas consumption. We use 18% less gas now than we did in 2022. Also, we’ve diversified. We used to get 45% of our gas from Russia… now we get gas from different suppliers around the planet,” Jorgensen told reporters.
“But on the other hand, this crisis is also worse because this is also oil and oil products. We’ve even seen situations where there was a threat to our security of supply last summer on jet fuel. We’re not there now.”
The EU is entering the winter heating season with gas storage sites 75% full, down from 83% a year earlier.
European wholesale gas prices briefly touched 100 euros per megawatt-hour on Wednesday for the first time since December 2022, when Europe was reeling from the loss of most Russian pipeline gas supply. Prices have climbed as the Middle East conflict has escalated and are now around three times higher than before the Iran war.
Fighting has damaged refineries across the Middle East and Russia, and disrupted oil and gas flows through key shipping routes including the Black Sea, Red Sea and Strait of Hormuz.
Pledge to release over 42 million barrels of oil
The European Commission began talks with refiners on Wednesday on ways to boost output, including by potentially easing some technical specifications. Western powers also agreed this month to accelerate the release of more than 400 million barrels from emergency oil stockpiles following U.S. pressure.
A dozen European countries pledged Thursday to jointly release more than 42 million barrels of oil in the coming months, Jorgensen said.
“EU member states have reaffirmed their commitment to an accelerated release of 42.6 million barrels from strategic reserves over the next months, and around half of this will be diesel,” he noted.
The 12 countries, including France, Germany and Italy, said in a statement they would release the oil from strategic reserves by the end of January 2027, including 20.5 million barrels of diesel.
The other European countries involved are Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden.
The International Energy Agency – to which all 12 nations belong – made a similar call in mid-October for its members to step up the release of oil stocks ahead of winter.
U.S. President Donald Trump ramped up the pressure on Europe to release reserves after the Iran war sent energy prices skyrocketing, coming back to bite him at home with high fuel costs that have become a key issue ahead of congressional elections next week.
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