Warner reopens talks, gives Paramount 7 days for final offer

Good morning. Here’s what happened overnight and what you need to know today.

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1.

Best and final: Warner Bros Discovery granted Paramount Skydance one week to submit its “best and final offer”, reopening talks with the media company and potentially setting the stage for a second bidding war with Netflix. Warner Bros on Tuesday said it has negotiated a waiver with Netflix — with which it has a pending transaction — allowing it to reopen talks with Paramount until 23 February. The decision to negotiate was made after a Paramount representative told a member of the Warner Bros board that Paramount would increase its USD30 ($42.54) per share offer to at least USD31 per share should the company reopen talks. The Warner Bros board still recommends shareholders vote in favour of its agreement to sell its studios and HBO Max streaming service to Netflix when the board meets on 20 March. Netflix said despite the “narrow seven-day waiver” granted to Paramount, the shareholder meeting date marks an “important milestone for our transaction with WBD”. (Warner Bros)(Netflix)(FT)(Bloomberg)(Capital Brief)

2.

Iran talks: Iran and the US have reached a “general understanding” on “guiding principles” to steer negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear programme following talks in Geneva on Tuesday, according to reports. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said “good progress” had been made and that the sides had agreed on principles to help move towards drafting a potential agreement, but stressed this did not mean a deal was imminent. He warned that once work began on the text it would become “more difficult and detailed” and said it would “take time” for the two sides’ positions “to come closer”. An unnamed US official told the Financial Times that “progress was made, but there are still a lot of details to discuss” and that Iranian negotiators would return within two weeks with detailed proposals to address remaining gaps. Oman’s Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi said “much work is yet to be done” but the parties were leaving with “clear next steps”. Oil prices fell after Araghchi’s comments. (Bloomberg)(Reuters)(FT)

3.

Operation ‘get Taylor’: 26 November 2025 was a red letter day for the Labor Party, with the release of the Australian Election Study, an independent, academic survey of more than 2,000 Australians conducted after each election since 1987. The study found that, for the first time in its 38 years, Australians had named Labor as a better economic manager than the Coalition. This one data point sits at the basis of the strategy Labor is now developing to counter the rise of new Liberal leader Angus Taylor. Labor argues Taylor’s performance as shadow treasurer under Peter Dutton sits at the heart of the Coalition’s fall from economic policy grace and is the obvious path to destroying the Coalition in 2028. “Angus Taylor has all the slogans and none of the solutions,“ Assistant Productivity Minister Andrew Leigh told Capital Brief. “He’s the one responsible for us becoming favoured economic managers”, one senior Labor insider said. (Capital Brief)

4.

Defence dollars: The Albanese government will establish a $1 billion fund to tap the venture capital market for high-tech military hardware, the Australian Financial Review reported without saying where it got the information. Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy will announce on Wednesday that the federal government will co-contribute up to $500 million alongside the private sector to boost the local defence industry, the paper said. Capabilities that could receive funding include emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum and undersea warfare. The information came amid pressure from the Trump administration for allies to increase spending and debate about whether Australia is investing enough in defence. In the same piece, Ely Ratner, Biden’s assistant secretary of defence for Indo-Pacific security affairs, told the paper it was an open question whether Australia had budgeted enough to fund other defence capabilities required outside AUKUS, including airfield upgrades and integrated air and missile defence. “It is very likely that Australia is going to need to spend more on defence,” he said. (AFR)

5.

AI fatigue: US stocks were subdued in volatile trading overnight, as heavyweight technology shares teetered following an AI-led selloff, while financials outperformed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was trading 0.09% higher in New York afternoon trade, while the S&P 500 was up 0.01% and the Nasdaq Composite was 0.15% higher. All three indices swung between losses and gains earlier in the session before edging slightly higher. Worries about artificial intelligence disrupting business models had sparked a selloff in software firms, brokerages and trucking companies the previous week. After the Monday holiday, the S&P 500 software index traded 1.4% lower, according to Bloomberg, as traders struggled to assess the outlook for AI. In corporate moves, biotech conglomerate Danaher agreed to buy medical device maker Masimo for USD9.9 billion ($14 billion) including debt, sending Masimo shares up 34%, while Norwegian Cruise Line shares jumped after activist Elliott said it had built a more than 10% stake. And packaged foods maker General Mills lowered its annual sales and profit outlook citing weak consumer sentiment, heightened uncertainty and significant volatility, sending shares sharply lower. (Reuters)(WSJ)(Bloomberg)

6.

Sonnet code: Anthropic released Claude Sonnet 4.6, a new AI model designed to be better at using people’s computers in increasingly complicated ways, the company said. The model can perform computer actions that involve multiple steps, including completing web forms and coordinating information across several browser tabs. It builds on Anthropic’s earlier “computer use” capability introduced in late 2024, Bloomberg noted. Sonnet 4.6 is the company’s second major model launch in less than two weeks, following the release of Claude Opus 4.6 twelve days ago. Anthropic said the new model improves performance in coding, design and knowledge work, with “much-improved coding skills”, and is more consistent in following coding instructions. It is also better than Sonnet 4.5 at resisting prompt injection attacks, where a malicious instruction is used to trick or manipulate the model. Sonnet 4.6 will become the default model for free and Pro users of the Claude chatbot and Claude Cowork tool. Earlier, the AI developer and Infosys unveiled a partnership to build custom AI agents for complex, regulated industries, starting in telecommunications and later expanding to financial services, manufacturing and software development. (Bloomberg)(Reuters)(Anthropic)

7.

Vast commitment: The Adani Group pledged to invest USD100 billion ($141.97 billion) to develop renewable energy powered, AI-ready data centres across India by 2035 in an attempt to create the world’s largest integrated data centre platform. Adani said that the investment is expected to incentivise an additional USD150 billion in spending across server manufacturing, advanced electrical infrastructure, sovereign cloud platforms and supporting industries. It projects the investment will create a USD250 billion AI infrastructure ecosystem in India over the decade. The commitment expands on AdaniConnex’s existing 2GW national data centre, growing toward a 5GW target. The announcement coincides with India’s AI Impact Summit which has seen tech executives and leaders from the world’s biggest AI companies including OpenAI, Nvidia, Anthropic, Microsoft and Google descend on New Delhi. Meanwhile the India- and US-based AI startup Emergent said it has reached a USD100 million annual revenue run rate less than one year after launching its AI-powered software development platform, putting the Softbank-backed firm among the fastest-growing AI startups. (Adani Group)(CNBC)(Bloomberg)(Capital Brief)

8.

Jesse Jackson: Civil rights leader and Democratic US presidential candidate, Reverend Jesse Jackson has died aged 84. A statement released by his family said Jackson died peacefully on Tuesday morning, surrounded by his family. In 2017 he disclosed that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Jackson sought the Democratic nomination for US president in 1984 and 1988, winning just under seven million votes on his second attempt. One of the most prominent US civil rights leaders of the twentieth century, Jackson was a close supporter of Martin Luther King Jr and was present when King Jr was assassinated in Memphis in 1968. Daughter of King Jr, Bernice King, acknowledged the passing with a photo of her father alongside Jackson with the caption “both now ancestors.” Tributes poured in for the leader, with US President Donald Trump saying Jackson was a “force of nature like few others before him” and former president Joe Biden adding he “helped lead our Nation forward through tumult and triumph”. Former US vice president Kamala Harris, civil rights leader Reverend Al Sharpton and the NAACP also honoured Jackson’s passing. (Jackson Family statement)(Bloomberg)(NYT)(BBC)