Trending tickers: Nvidia, UniCredit, Commerzbank, Fevertree

Lucy Harley-McKeown

Nvidia staged another euphoric rally in US trading hours on Wednesday, jumping 8.2% as its CEO Jensen Huang laid out his expectations and worries related to the future of AI.

“We have a lot of people on our shoulders, and everybody is counting on us,” Huang said when asked about his biggest worry by Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia and Technology Conference.

“Demand is so great that delivery of our components, our technology, infrastructure, and software is really emotional for people," Huang added. "Because it directly affects their revenues, it directly affects their competitiveness.”

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Following Nvidia's brutal sell-off last week, Huang's keynote was seen as an opportunity to calm investors' nerves. And it seems to have worked. The rally also buoyed other chipmakers and knocked on into Asian trading hours.

“The infrastructure players like ourselves and all the cloud service providers put the infrastructure in the cloud so that developers can use these machines to train the models and fine-tune the models, guardrail the models,” Huang added. “And the return on that is just fantastic.”

European banks rallied on Thursday as UniCredit CEO Andrea Orcel confirmed the lender had approached Commerzbank (CBK.DE) management to explore a merger. The move was first reported by Reuters, which cited a source familiar.

The news comes after UniCredit announced on Wednesday it has purchased a 9% stake in the Frankfurt-based bank.

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The pair are the second biggest listed lenders in their respective homes of Italy and Germany. According to the Financial Times, UniCredit has requested permission from EU regulators to increase its stake above 9.9% in Commerzbank.

The move could kickstart consolidation across a fragmented banking landscape in Europe, potentially cementing the pair as a new power player.

Drinks maker Fevertree slipped 8.5% in London on Thursday after it reported that the poor British summer had meant its revenues took a hit in the first financial half as people drank fewer gin and tonics. Its profits also missed expectations.

Revenue hit £170.6m ($222.5m) in the first six months of the year, flat on a reported basis but up 2% when taking into account currency swings.

The company increased its interim dividend by 2% to 5.85p per share. This was due to a "strong start" to its second half.

Fevertree cut its sales forecast, with expected revenue growth of 4% to 5% this year. It had previously projected growth of around 10%.

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