The Securities and Exchange Commission's possible plan to grant crypto companies relief from regulation to sell "tokenised" stocks risks harming investors, a group of stock exchanges said in a letter to the U.S. regulator this week. From a report: Several crypto companies plan to sell crypto tokens linked to listed equities to retail investors who want to get exposure to stocks without owning them directly. But to sell the products in the U.S., crypto companies which are not registered as broker-dealers would need the SEC to give them a no-action letter or an exemption.

SEC Chair Paul Atkins has said the agency is working on crafting an "innovation exemption" from securities laws which would enable crypto players to experiment with new business models. The World Federation of Exchanges (WFE), a group whose members include the U.S. Nasdaq and Germany's Deutsche Boerse, said in a letter dated November 21 that an exemption could create market integrity risks and undermine investor protections. "The SEC should avoid granting exemptions to firms attempting to bypass regulatory principles that have safeguarded markets for decades," WFE CEO Nandini Sukumar told Reuters.

An anonymous reader shared this report from Forbes: On November 20, at approximately 4 p.m. Eastern time, Napster held an online meeting for its shareholders; an estimated 700 of roughly 1,500 including employees, former employees and individual investors tuned in. That's when its CEO John Acunto told everyone he believed that the never-identified big investor — who the company had insisted put in $3.36 billion at a $12 billion valuation in January, which would have made it one of the year's biggest fundraises — was not going to come through.

In an email sent out shortly after, it told existing investors that some would get a bigger percentage of the company, due to the canceled shares, and went on to describe itself as a "victim of misconduct," adding that it was "assisting law enforcement with their ongoing investigations." As for the promised tender offer, which would have allowed shareholders to cash out, that too was called off. "Since that investor was also behind the potential tender, we also no longer believe that will occur," the company wrote in the email.

At this point it seems unlikely that getting bigger stakes in the business will make any of the investors too happy. The company had been stringing its employees and investors along for nearly a year with ever-changing promises of an impending cash infusion and chances to sell their shares in a tender offer that would change everything. In fact, it was the fourth time since 2022 they've been told they could soon cash out via a tender offer, and the fourth time the potential deal fell through. Napster spokesperson Gillian Sheldon said certain statements about the fundraise "were made in good faith based on what we understood at the time. We have since uncovered indications of misconduct that suggest the information provided to us then was not accurate."
The article notes America's Department of Justice has launched an investigation (in which Napster is not a target), while the Securities and Exchange Commission has a separate ongoing investigation from 2022 into Napster's scrapped reverse merger.

While Napster announced they'd been acquired for $207 million by a tech company named Infinite Reality, Forbes says that company faced "a string of lawsuits from creditors alleging unpaid bills, a federal lawsuit to enforce compliance with an SEC subpoena (now dismissed) and exaggerated claims about the extent of their partnerships with Manchester City Football Club and Google. The company also touted 'top-tier' investors who never directly invested in the firm, and its anonymous $3 billion investment that its spokesperson told Forbes in March was in "an Infinite Reality account and is available to us" and that they were 'actively leveraging' it..."

And by the end, "Napster appears to have been scrambling to raise cash to keep the lights on, working with brokers and investment advisors including a few who had previously gotten into trouble with regulators.... If it turns out that Napster knew the fundraise wasn't happening and it benefited from misrepresenting itself to investors or acquirees, it could face much bigger problems. That's because doing so could be considered securities fraud."

An anonymous reader shares a report: Harvard is ramping up its holdings in cryptocurrency. The nation's oldest university reported a $443 million investment in BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust in the third quarter. The school now holds 6.8 million shares of the exchange-traded fund, up from 1.9 million in the second quarter.

The digital currency amounts to a little less than 1% of the school's $57 billion endowment. Other schools are bullish on crypto as well. Brown University reported holding $13 million of the BlackRock bitcoin ETF in the second quarter and Emory University reported holding $20 million of Grayscale's Bitcoin Mini Trust ETF as of March.

"Just a little more than a month after reaching an all-time high, Bitcoin has erased the more than 30% gain registered since the start of the year..." reports Bloomberg: The dominant cryptocurrency fell below US$93,714 on Sunday, pushing the price beneath the closing level reached at the end of last year, when financial markets were rallying following President Donald Trump's election victory. Bitcoin soared to a record US$126,251 on Oct 6, only to begin tumbling four days later after unexpected comments on tariffs by Trump sent markets into a tailspin worldwide. "The general market is risk-off," said Matthew Hougan, the San Francisco-based chief investment officer for Bitwise Asset Management. "Crypto was the canary in the coal mine for that, it was the first to flinch."

Over the past month, many of the biggest buyers — from exchange-traded fund allocators to corporate treasuries — have quietly stepped back, depriving the market of the flow-driven support that helped propel the token to records earlier this year. For much of the year, institutions were the backbone of Bitcoin's legitimacy and its price. ETFs as a cohort took in more than US$25 billion, according to Bloomberg data, pushing assets as high as roughly US$169 billion. Their steady allocation flows helped reframe the asset as a portfolio diversifier — a hedge against inflation, monetary debasement and political disarray. But that narrative — always tenuous — is fraying afresh, leaving the market exposed to something quieter but no less destabilising: disengagement. "The selloff is a confluence of profit-taking by LTHs, institutional outflows, macro uncertainty, and leveraged longs getting wiped out," said Jake Kennis, senior research analyst at Nansen. "What is clear is that the market has temporarily chosen a downward direction after a long period of consolidation/ranging..."

Boom and bust cycles have been a constant since Bitcoin burst into the mainstream consciousness with a more than 13,000% surge in 2017, only to be followed by a plunge of almost 75% the following year... Bitcoin has whipsawed investors through the year, dropping to as low as US$74,400 in April as Trump unveiled his tariffs, before rebounding to record highs ahead of the latest retreat... The market downturn has been even tougher on smaller, less liquid tokens that traders often gravitate toward because of their higher volatility and typical outperformance during rallies. A MarketVector index tracking the bottom half of the largest 100 digital assets is down around 60% this year.

"Windows is evolving into an agentic OS," Microsoft's president of Windows Pavan Davuluri posted on X.com, "connecting devices, cloud, and AI to unlock intelligent productivity and secure work anywhere."

But former Uber software engineer and engineering manager Gergely Orosz was unimpressed. "Can't see any reason for software engineers to choose Windows with this weird direction they are doubling down on. So odd because Microsoft has building dev tools in their DNA... their OS doesn't look like anything a builder who wants OS control could choose. Mac or Linux it is for devs."

Davuluri "has since disabled replies on his original post..." notes the blog Windows Central, "which some people viewed as an attempt to shut out negative feedback." But he also replied to that comment... Davuluri says "we care deeply about developers. We know we have work to do on the experience, both on the everyday usability, from inconsistent dialogs to power user experiences. When we meet as a team, we discuss these pain points and others in detail, because we want developers to choose Windows..." The good news is Davuluri has confirmed that Microsoft is listening, and is aware of the backlash it's receiving over the company's obsession with AI in Windows 11. That doesn't mean the company is going to stop with adding AI to Windows, but it does mean we can also expect Microsoft to focus on the other things that matter too, such as stability and power user enhancements.
Elsewhere on X.com, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella shared his own thoughts on "the net benefit of the AI platform wave ." The Times of India reports: Nadella said tech companies should focus on building AI systems that create more value for the people and businesses using them, not just for the companies that make the technology. He cited Bill Gates to emphasize the same: "A platform is when the economic value of everybody that uses it exceeds the value of the company that creates it."Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded to Nadella's post with a facepalm emoji.

Nadella said this idea matters even more during the current AI boom, where many firms risk giving away too much of their own value to big tech platforms. "The real question is how to empower every company out there to build their own AI-native capabilities," he wrote. Nadella says Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI is an example of zero-sum mindset industry... [He also cited Microsoft's "work to bring AMD into the fleet."]
More from Satya Nadella's post: Thanks to AI, the [coding] category itself has expanded and may ultimately become one of the largest software categories. I don't ever recall any analyst ever asking me about how much revenue Visual Studio makes! But now everyone is excited about AI coding tools. This is another aspect of positive sum, when the category itself is redefined and the pie becomes 10x what it was! With GitHub Copilot we compete for our share and with GitHub and Agent HQ we also provide a platform for others.

Of course, the real test of this era won't be when another tech company breaks a valuation record. It will be when the overall economy and society themselves reach new heights. When a pharma company uses AI in silico to bring a new therapy to market in one year instead of twelve. When a manufacturer uses AI to redesign a supply chain overnight. When a teacher personalizes lessons for every student. When a farmer predicts and prevents crop failure.That's when we'll know the system is working.

Let us move beyond zero-sum thinking and the winner-take-all hype and focus instead on building broad capabilities that harness the power of this technology to achieve local success in each firm, which then leads to broad economic growth and societal benefits. And every firm needs to make sure they have control of their own destiny and sovereignty vs just a press release with a Tech/AI company or worse leak all their value through what may seem like a partnership, except it's extractive in terms of value exchange in the long run.

Michael Burry, the investor made famous for his bet against the US housing market ahead of the 2008 financial crisis, is closing his hedge fund [non-paywalled source] as he warned that market valuations had become unhinged from fundamentals. From a report: Scion Asset Management this week terminated its registration with US securities regulators, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission database. Burry told investors that he would "liquidate the funds and return capital -- but for a small audit/tax holdback -- by year's end," according to two people with direct knowledge of a letter he sent to investors.

"My estimation of value in securities is not now, and has not been for some time, in sync with the markets," said the letter, which was dated October 27. The move to close Scion comes as some investors have become concerned that markets are trading at frothy levels after years of strong returns. Those jitters flared up on Thursday, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite sliding nearly 2%. Still, the big gains for tech stocks this year, driven by hopes that artificial intelligence will transform business and society, have left valuations at lofty heights compared with their average in recent years.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The volume of activity on Polymarket, one of the most popular prediction markets, has been significantly inflated by so-called wash trading in which users rapidly buy and sell the same contracts, according to a new study by Columbia University researchers. The "artificial trading," as the authors call it, varied over time but accounted for an average of 25% of all buying and selling on Polymarket over the past three years, the researchers concluded.

The paper, which has not undergone peer review, was posted Thursday on the open-access research platform SSRN. The authors do not suggest that Polymarket itself was responsible for the wash trading, but they point to elements of the exchange's crypto-based structure that make it possible.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Chinese President Xi Jinping joked about security backdoors while presenting a pair of Xiaomi smartphones to his South Korean counterpart, a rare moment of spontaneous levity captured during a week of tense trade negotiations with Donald Trump.

Xi, in South Korea to meet Trump on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, presented the pair of devices to Korean President Lee Jae Myung. In a video circulated on social media, Lee asked: "Is the line secure?" Xi chuckled, pointed at the gadgets and replied through an interpreter: "You can check if there's a backdoor." The two leaders burst into laughter.

The exchange was striking because the issue of security and alleged espionage is a sensitive one and a major thorn in US-Chinese relations. American lawmakers have raised the possibility that tech companies such as Huawei build backdoors -- ways to gain access to sensitive data -- into their equipment or services, something the firms have repeatedly denied.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Even before Azure had a global failure this week, Austria's Ministry of Economy had taken a decisive step toward digital sovereignty. The Ministry achieved this status by migrating 1,200 employees to a Nextcloud-based cloud and collaboration platform hosted on Austrian-based infrastructure. This shift away from proprietary, foreign-owned cloud services, such as Microsoft 365, to an open-source, European-based cloud service aligns with a growing trend among European governments and agencies. They want control over sensitive data and to declare their independence from US-based tech providers.

European companies are encouraging this trend. Many of them have joined forces in the newly created non-profit foundation, the EuroStack Initiative. This foundation's goal is " to organize action, not just talk, around the pillars of the initiative: Buy European, Sell European, Fund European." What's the motive behind these moves away from proprietary tech? Well, in Austria's case, Florian Zinnagl, CISO of the Ministry of Economy, Energy, and Tourism (BMWET), explained, "We carry responsibility for a large amount of sensitive data -- from employees, companies, and citizens. As a public institution, we take this responsibility very seriously. That's why we view it critically to rely on cloud solutions from non-European corporations for processing this information."

Austria's move and motivation echo similar efforts in Germany, Denmark, and other EU states and agencies. The organizations include the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, which abandoned Exchange and Outlook for open-source programs. Other agencies that have taken the same path away from Microsoft include the Austrian military, Danish government organizations, and the French city of Lyon. All of these organizations aim to keep data storage and processing within national or European borders to enhance security, comply with privacy laws such as the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and mitigate risks from potential commercial and foreign government surveillance.

An anonymous reader shares a report: When Coinbase's quarterly earnings call wrapped up Thursday, its chief executive, Brian Armstrong, didn't finish with profit guidance or statements of confidence. He closed it out with a list: "Bitcoin, Ethereum, blockchain, staking and Web3." Those weren't random buzzwords. They were part of an $84,000 betting market [non-paywalled source].

Across prediction market platforms Kalshi and Polymarket, users had wagered on which words would be spoken during the call -- part of a niche category known as mention markets, where the outcome isn't tied to earnings, price moves or sports games, but to what people say in some public forum. With the final analyst question complete, several terms listed in contracts were still unsaid. Armstrong ticked them off one by one.

"I was a little distracted because I was tracking the prediction market about what Coinbase will say on their next earnings call," he said in his parting remarks. "I just want to add here the words Bitcoin, Ethereum, blockchain, staking, and Web3 -- to make sure we get those in before the end of the call." The exchange's CEO had just moved a market -- even if only a small one.

Mention markets are one of the more curious byproducts of the broader prediction market boom, but also one of the more controversial. Platforms like Kalshi, which is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Polymarket, which is in the process of returning to the US market, let users wager on the outcomes of real-world events. That can mean elections, policy decisions, or sports -- but also, increasingly, corporate rituals and even common jargon.

Snowflake filed an 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this week after its chief revenue officer gave financial projections in a TikTok video. Mike Gannon told an influencer outside the New York Stock Exchange that the data-storage company would exit the year with just over $4.5 billion in revenue and reach $10 billion in a couple of years.

The filing stated that Gannon is not authorized to disclose financial information on behalf of the company and that investors should not rely on his statements. Snowflake reaffirmed its August guidance of $.395 billion for fiscal year 2026. The video appeared on an account called theschoolofhardknockz and drew more than 555,000 views on TikTok. Gannon told the interviewer he watches the videos all the time.

The Associated Press reports that "North Korean hackers have pilfered billions of dollars" by breaking into cryptocurrency exchanges and by creating fake identities to get remote tech jobs at foreign companies — all orchestrated by the North Korean government to finance R&D on nuclear arms.

That's according to a new the 138-page report by a group watching North Korea's compliance with U.N. sanctions (including officials from the U.S., Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Korea and the United Kingdom). From the Associated Press: North Korea also has used cryptocurrency to launder money and make military purchases to evade international sanctions tied to its nuclear program, the report said. It detailed how hackers working for North Korea have targeted foreign businesses and organizations with malware designed to disrupt networks and steal sensitive data...

Unlike China, Russia and Iran, North Korea has focused much of its cyber capabilities to fund its government, using cyberattacks and fake workers to steal and defraud companies and organizations elsewhere in the world... Earlier this year, hackers linked to North Korea carried out one of the largest crypto heists ever, stealing $1.5 billion worth of ethereum from Bybit. The FBI later linked the theft to a group of hackers working for the North Korean intelligence service.

Federal authorities also have alleged that thousands of IT workers employed by U.S. companies were actually North Koreans using assumed identities to land remote work. The workers gained access to internal systems and funneled their salaries back to North Korea's government. In some cases, the workers held several remote jobs at the same time.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Donald Trump is eyeing taking equity stakes in quantum computing firms in exchange for federal funding, The Wall Street Journal reported. At least five companies are weighing whether allowing the government to become a shareholder would be worth it to snag funding that the Trump administration has "earmarked for promising technology companies," sources familiar with the potential deals told the WSJ.

IonQ, Rigetti Computing, and D-Wave Quantum are currently in talks with the government over potential funding agreements, with minimum awards of $10 million each, some sources said. Quantum Computing Inc. and Atom Computing are reportedly "considering similar arrangements," as are other companies in the sector, which is viewed as critical for scientific advancements and next-generation technologies. No deals have been completed yet, sources said, and terms could change as quantum-computing firms weigh the potential risks of government influence over their operations. [...]

The administration will lean on Deputy Commerce Secretary Paul Dabbar to extend Trump's industry meddling into the quantum computing world, the WSJ reported. A former Energy Department official, Dabbar co-founded Bohr Quantum Technology, which specializes in quantum networking systems that the DOE expects will help "create new opportunities for scientific discovery." While the firm he previously headed won't be eligible for funding, Dabbar will be leading industry discussions, the WSJ reported, likely hyping Trump's deals as a necessary boon to ensure US firms dominate in quantum computing. A Commerce Department official denied the claims, saying: "The Commerce Department is not currently negotiating equity stakes with quantum computing companies."

In August, the Trump administration took a 10% stake in Intel to help fund factories that Intel is currently building in Ohio.

Microsoft is retiring Office Online Server on December 31, 2026, ending support and updates for organizations running browser-based Office apps on-premises. The Register reports: After this, there won't be any more security fixes, updates, or technical support from Microsoft. "This change is part of our ongoing commitment to modernizing productivity experiences and focusing on cloud-first solutions," the company said. Office Online Server provides browser-based versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote for customers who want to keep things on-prem without having to roll out the full desktop applications. Microsoft's solution is to move to Microsoft 365, its decidedly off-premises version of its applications. The company said it is "focusing its browser-based Office app investments on Office for the Web to deliver secure, collaborative, and feature-rich experiences through Microsoft 365."

Other than migrating to another platform when the vendor pulls the plug, affected customers have few options. The announcement will also hit several customers running SharePoint Server SE or Exchange Server SE. While those products remain supported, Office Online Server integration will go away. The company suggested Microsoft 365 Apps for Enterprise and Office LTSC 2024 as alternatives for viewing and editing documents hosted on those servers.

Skype for Business customers will also lose some key features related to PowerPoint. Presenter notes and high-fidelity PowerPoint rendering will go away. In-meeting annotations, which allow meeting participants to write directly to slides without altering the original file, will no longer be available, and embedded video playback will run at lower fidelity. Features like whiteboards, polls, and app sharing shouldn't be affected. Microsoft's solution is a move to Teams, which the company says "offers modern meeting experiences."

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has issued criminal subpoenas to Roblox, calling it a "breeding ground for predators" and accusing the platform of profiting while failing to protect children. NBC News reports: The subpoenas will allow prosecutors to gather more information about the alleged criminal activity on the platform, including evidence related to suspected predators and victims, according to Uthmeier. The concerns prompted Roblox to invest heavily in protecting younger users on its platform by tightening messaging rules for children under 13, intensive content moderation and AI-powered monitoring.

In an emailed statement to Reuters, Roblox said it prohibits sharing images and videos in chat, uses filters designed to block the exchange of personal information, and is working to implement age estimation for all users accessing chat features. "While no system is perfect, our trained teams and automated tools continuously monitor communications to detect and remove harmful content," a Roblox spokesperson said.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says his company has lost all access to China's market after U.S. export restrictions eliminated what was once a 95% share. Speaking in an interview with Citadel Securities, Huang questioned the wisdom of policies that cost America one of the world's largest markets.

The Biden Administration imposed rules in 2022 to restrict exports of Nvidia's most advanced AI chips to China. The Trump Administration blocked additional chip sales in April and later granted export licenses for certain Nvidia and AMD chips in exchange for 15% of revenues. Chinese regulators responded by telling domestic tech companies to avoid Nvidia chips designed to meet U.S. export requirements. Beijing also placed strict limits on exports of rare earths. Huang noted that about half the world's AI researchers are in China and called it a mistake not to have them build AI on American technology.

Readers in 2025 "may struggle to remember the optimism of the aughts, when the internet seemed to offer endless possibilities for virtual art and writing that was free..." argues a new review at Bookforum. "The content we do create online, if we still create, often feels unreflectively automatic: predictable quote-tweet dunks, prefabricated poses on Instagram, TikTok dances that hit their beats like clockwork, to say nothing of what's literally thoughtlessly churned out by LLM-powered bots."

They write that author Joanna Walsh "wants us to remember how truly creative, and human, the internet once was," in the golden age of user-generated content — and funny cat picture sites like I Can Has Cheezburger: I Can Has Cheezburger... was an amateur project, an outlet for tech professionals who wanted an easier way to exchange cute cat pics after a hard day at work. In Amateurs!: How We Built Internet Culture and Why It Matters, Walsh documents how unpaid creative labor is the basis for almost everything that's good (and much that's bad) online, including the open-source code Linux, developed by Linus Torvalds when he was still in school ("just as a hobby, won't be big and professional"), and even, in Walsh's account, the World Wide Web itself. The platforms that emerged in the 2000s as "Web 2.0," including Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter, allowed anyone to experiment in a space that had been reserved for coders and hackers, making the internet interactive even for the inexpert and virtually unlimited in potential audience. The explosion in amateur creativity that followed took many forms, from memes to tweeted one-liners to diaristic blogs to durational digital performances to sloppy Photoshops to the formal and informal taxonomic structures — wikis, neologisms, digitally native dialects...

[U]ser-generated content was also, at bottom, about the bottom line, a business model sold to us under the guise of artistic empowerment. Even referring to an anonymous amateur as a "user," Walsh argues, cedes ground: these platforms are populated by producers, but their owners see us as, and turn us into, "helpless addicts." For some, online amateurism translated to professional success, a viral post earning an author a book deal, or a reputation as a top commenter leading to a staff writing job on a web publication... But for most, these days, participation in the online attention economy feels like a tax, or maybe a trickle of revenue, rather than free fun or a ticket to fame. The few remaining professionals in the arts and letters have felt pressured to supplement their full-time jobs with social media self-promotion, subscription newsletters, podcasts, and short-form video. On what was once called Twitter, users can pay, and sometimes get paid, to post with greater reach...

The chapters are bookended by an introduction on the early promise of 2004 and a coda on the defeat of 2025 and supplemented by an appendix with a straightforward timeline of the major events and publications that serve as the book's touchstones... The online spaces where amateur content creators once "created and steered online culture" have been hollowed out and replaced by slop, but what really hurts is that the slop is being produced by bots trained on precisely that amateur content.

Foreign institutional investors have pulled nearly $30 billion from Indian equity markets over the past twelve months. A substantial portion of that capital moved to Korea and Taiwan. Foreign portfolio investor ownership in stocks listed on India's National Stock Exchange fell from 22.2% in September 2024 to 17.3% in May 2025. Taiwan absorbed $15 billion of net foreign inflows in the third quarter of 2025 alone.

HSBC analysts say global investors increasingly view India through the lens of AI economics and are positioning the world's most populous nation as a global anti-AI play. India employs roughly 20 million people directly and indirectly in IT services. Services account for 55% of Indian gross domestic product. HSBC estimates digital AI agents cost approximately one-third as much as human agents for customer support and certain mid-office functions. Global tech giants will spend two trillion dollars on AI infrastructure between 2025 and 2030. India's AI Mission committed $1.25 billion over five years beginning March 2024.

Apple will increase investment in China, the company's CEO Tim Cook said during a meeting with the country's industry minister in Beijing on Wednesday, according to an official summary of their exchange. From a report: Many U.S. companies have become cautious about relations with China as the world's two biggest economies have clashed over trade tariffs and as U.S. President Donald Trump seeks to promote manufacture in the United States rather than elsewhere.

But Cook told China's industry minister Li Lecheng the iPhone maker will keep investing in China, the Chinese ministry said, although the summary gave no details of the size of the projected investment.

"Dutch authorities have temporarily nationalized Nexperia, owned by Chinese company Wingtech, over fears of critical product unavailability," writes longtime Slashdot reader evil_aaronm. Reuters reports: The Hague invoked never-before-used powers under a Dutch law known as the "Availability of Goods Act." The decision led to a 10% fall in Wingtech's shares in Shanghai on Monday. The Dutch government will not take ownership of Nexperia, but it will now have the power to reverse or block management decisions it considers harmful. The company's regular production is continuing. [...] Wingtech called the Dutch government's intervention in Nexperia, once part of Dutch electronics group Philips, "excessive interference driven by geopolitical bias." Wingtech also alleged that non-Chinese Nexperia executives had tried to forcibly alter the company's equity structure through legal proceedings in a "cloaked power grab" on the company.

A copy of an Amsterdam commercial court ruling dated October 7 and seen by Reuters showed that the court decided on October 1 to suspend Wingtech CEO Zhang Xuezheng from his position as executive director at Nexperia after finding "well founded reasons to doubt" the company was pursuing correct management policy or actions under Dutch civil law. It appointed Dutch businessman Guido Dierick to take Zhang's position with a "deciding vote", and transferred control of almost all of Nexperia's shares to a Dutch lawyer for management. The Dutch state and the company's labour council had supported the moves, the document showed. [...]

In its statement, the Dutch government said that administrative problems at Nexperia posed a threat to the company's "crucial technological knowledge" without elaborating. "The loss of these capabilities could pose a risk to Dutch and European economic security," it said. Nexperia is one of the world's largest makers of simple computer chips such as diodes and transistors, though it also develops more advanced technologies such as "wide gap" semiconductors used in electrical settings and useful for electric cars, chargers and AI data centres. Wingtech said in a filing to the Shanghai stock exchange on Monday that its control over Nexperia would be temporarily restricted due to the Dutch order and court rulings, affecting decision making and operational efficiency.