NEWS IN BRIEF - Business: Nvidia is the first company to be worth more than four trillion dollars +++ Italian Unicredit is now the largest shareholder in Commerzbank

(dpa) On July 9, chip giant Nvidia became the first company to break the four trillion dollar market capitalization mark. Nvidia shares are on a high, driven by the boom in artificial intelligence.

The share price rose by as much as 2.8 percent to $164.42 in early New York trading, bringing the market capitalization to just over $4 trillion.

Nvidia's chip systems are used around the world to train artificial intelligence applications. Heavyweights like Google and Facebook's Meta fill entire data centers with them – but AI startups like ChatGPT inventor OpenAI are also relying on them. This key position has led to explosive growth in Nvidia's business over the past two years.

With this stock market record, Nvidia cemented its status as the most valuable company. Microsoft currently holds second place with a market capitalization of $3.75 trillion. The software manufacturer's shares also reached a record high of just under $505 on Wednesday. Apple follows with a market capitalization of $3.1 trillion, now a considerable distance behind in third place. At the end of last year, the iPhone company also came close to the $4 trillion mark.

(dpa) Recently, the scenario of a Commerzbank takeover seemed a distant prospect, but now a spectacular turnaround has occurred: The Italian Unicredit has become Commerzbank's largest shareholder, once again attracting the ire of Germany's second-largest private bank. And that's not all: Unicredit CEO Andrea Orcel is hinting at further aggressive steps that would bring the Milan-based major bank close to a takeover offer for Commerzbank.

The reaction from Frankfurt was correspondingly angry: "This step has once again not been coordinated with Commerzbank," explained the DAX-listed group, which has been trying to preserve its independence for months.

Previously, on Tuesday evening, Milan-based Unicredit announced that it had doubled its direct stake in Commerzbank, and thus its voting rights, from just under 10 percent to around 20 percent. This replaces the German government as the largest shareholder to date. The German government, which saved Commerzbank from collapse during the global financial crisis with billions in tax revenue, still holds a good 12 percent of the shares. If the direct stake were to be increased again, Unicredit would be close to the 30 percent threshold at which it would be legally obligated to make an official takeover offer to the remaining Commerzbank shareholders.

The Federal Cartel Office also gave the green light. Unicredit would not have to fear any resistance from Germany's top competition watchdog in a potential Commerzbank takeover. Cartel Office chief Andreas Mundt said he sees no problems from a competition perspective: "If there were a subsequent decision, I don't see that we would see it differently – the standards are always the same, it makes no difference."