Evening Briefing: Europe

Orsted is suing the US government as it tries to revive the building of its offshore wind farm in New England, which has been blocked by Donald Trump’s administration despite being around 80% complete. The order to block the project for national security reasons was delivered just hours after Danish Foreign Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen signed a climate agreement with California Governor Gavin Newsom in August, prompting speculation in Denmark, Orsted’s base, that it was retaliation from Trump.

The wind farm went through an extensive planning process that spanned agencies that included environmental and national defense reviews, across three presidential administrations, according to Osted’s suit. Revolution Wind says it has spent or committed $5 billion to it already and intended to provide power for hundreds of thousands of households in Rhode Island and Connecticut.

Hours after Orsted’s suit was filed in federal court in Washington today, Rhode Island and Connecticut announced a lawsuit of their own.

The Revolution Wind construction hub at the Port of Providence in Providence, Rhode Island Photographer: Adam Glanzman/Bloomberg

Wind power has been a bug bear of President Donald Trump for over a decade, since he first objected to offshore turbines near a golf course he owns in Scotland. He took his objections to court, but lost.

In office he has continued to pursue the agenda, issuing a flurry of orders to stop the US offshore wind business. He has also made a series of claims, including that wind turbines kill birds, cause cancer and drive whales “crazy,” and frequently refers to them as “windmills.”

Orsted is seeking an emergency ruling to vacate the administration’s stop work order from Aug. 22, and argues that this violates constitutional due process rights. –Helen Chandler-Wilde

What You Need to Know Today

French President Emmanuel Macron will try to avoid a snap election if Prime Minister François Bayrou is toppled in a confidence vote on Monday, according to people familiar with his thinking. France has faced political turmoil since Bayrou called the vote in the hope of pushing through planned budget cuts, which he says are crucial to avoid a fiscal crisis. Yet the budget has proved controversial within the parliament. Macron apparently does not want a repeat of what happened last year, when a snap election produced a splintered parliament.

Saudi Arabia attracted a near-record sum of foreign direct investment last year, reaching 19 billion riyals ($31.7 billion) or almost 37% more than first reported – leading it to sharply revise its figures. The amount matched levels seen in 2022 and was just shy of the record of $32.5 billion set in 2021. This year has also got off to a strong start, with the best first quarter since 2022. The strong FDI numbers suggest the kingdom is succeeding in plans to bring foreign partners to support Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s plans to diversify its economy.

Thousands of staff at Lloyds Banking Group are at risk of dismissal as it rolls out a performance review, according to the Financial Times. It will add pressure to the bottom-performing 5% of staff, with about half of those potentially losing their jobs unless they improve. The company employed 62,000 at the end of last year. This strategy is common at Wall St banks like Goldman Sachs, where staff are subject to annual culls that typically get rid of the weakest 3% to 5% to manage costs and make space for new talent.

Norway’s $2 trillion sovereign wealth fund has become an election football before Monday’s vote – an unusual move as the country has kept the investment out of politics since it was established in the early 1990s to manage surplus revenue from North Sea oil. The fund has made divestments relating to Israel’s war in Gaza, which began after fighters from Hamas – considered a terrorist organization by the US – launched a deadly attack in October 2023. This move has now drawn criticism, with questions asked about whether the fund should be politicized during an election campaign.

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store and US President Donald Trump at the White House in April. Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg

Revolut is quietly engineering a buyback of as much as 10% of its shares from eligible investors, in a bid to stay private for longer. This is on top of a secondary share sale that began on Monday which lets employees sell 20% of their shares. The transactions use different valuations of the company, with the employee sale estimating it to be worth $75 billion, while the buyback uses a figure of $45 billion. The series of deals shows the lengths that late-stage VC-backed companies go to to retain talent and appease shareholders in a globally subdued IPO market.

Slower interest-rate cuts in Turkey are now being forecast by Wall Street banks – as the country faces a market selloff triggered by political uncertainty. Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase expect the central bank to lower the benchmark rate by two percentage points at its next meeting on Sept. 11, down from prior calls for a 300-basis-points reduction. At its July meeting, the rate was cut by three percentage points to 43%. A court decision earlier this week raised the possibility of the collapse of the leadership of the opposition Republican People’s Party, causing market volatility and putting the central bank in a tricky position as it tries to get inflation below 30% by the end of the year, from 33% last month. The official target is 5%.

Citigroup has handed BlackRock $80 billion of client investments, in a move that closes the bank’s last remaining in-house asset manager and outsources more of its wealth unit. BlackRock already looks after some of Citi’s $635 billion in client investments, and will take on the last tranche that the bank still oversees itself – managing the assets of thousands of the bank’s richest customers.