Economy
Volkswagen signs letter of intent to assess car production in Türkiye
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.
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.
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.
The European Union and Canada aim to deepen cooperation on AI, climate, energy and security as they explore the possibility of Canada becoming the union’s first “associate member,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Thursday.
The term, which many EU countries oppose, has no legal meaning.
Deeper ties to Europe are part of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s strategy to reduce Canada’s economic and security reliance on the US since President Donald Trump imposed tariffs on Canadian goods. Still, Canada’s efforts to draw closer to the EU risk angering Trump as trade talks between Canada and the U.S. continue.
“Our idea is simple: it is an association without accession,” von der Leyen said in a speech in Montreal at a Canada-EU summit. “We can build a partnership that comes closer to membership than anything we have done before.”
“We can work on everything, from AI and climate to energy or security,” she said.
Canadian and EU leaders, however, dropped the idea of associate EU membership from their joint declaration, seen by Reuters, agreeing instead to an “ever closer association.”
The declaration, which officials plan to make public on Friday, said work to define the Canada-EU relationship would continue until another summit next year.
Von der Leyen first floated the idea of associate membership for Canada six weeks ago, prompting a rebuke from countries led by Germany that argued they could not agree to a concept that had no legal status and had not been fleshed out, diplomats said.
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