GLOBAL BRIEFING: US fires missiles at ship breaking Iran blockade

12. Aug 2026

(AWP Alliance News) - European equities are called lower and oil up near the USD90 mark again, after the US fired missiles at a ship it said had attempted to break its blockade of Iranian ports.

Here is what you need to know before the European market open on Wednesday:

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MARKETS

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CAC 40: called down 4.5 points, 0.1%, at 8,719.44

DAX 40: called down 16.3 points, 0.1%, at 26,407.72

FTSE 100: called down 24.8 points, 0.2%, at 10,868.99

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Hang Seng: down 1.2% at 25,352.13

Nikkei 225: up 0.6% at 67,338.05

S&P/ASX 200: down 0.6% at 9,198.50

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DJIA: closed down 184.13 points, 0.3%, at 53,791.85

S&P 500: closed down 24.91 points, 0.3%, to 7,728.20

Nasdaq Composite: closed down 159.91 points, 0.6%, at 26,445.45

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US 10-year Treasury yield: 4.68% (4.69%)

US 30-year Treasury yield: 5.23% (5.24%)

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EUR: lower at USD1.1534 (USD1.1541)

GBP: lower at USD1.3505 (USD1.3509)

USD: higher at JPY159.44 (JPY159.28)

GOLD: higher at USD4,397.51 per ounce (USD4,376.20)

OIL (Brent): higher at USD89.70 a barrel (USD88.22)

(changes since previous London equities close)

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ECONOMIC CALENDAR

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08:00 CEST Germany CPI

14:30 CEST Germany current account

10:00 CEST Italy CPI

08:30 EDT US CPI

10:30 EDT US EIA crude oil stocks

14:00 EDT US monthly budget statement

11:00 CEST IEA oil market report

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TOP ECONOMIC NEWS

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A US helicopter fired missiles into the engine room of a Panama-flagged cargo ship that attempted to break the American blockade of Iran's ports, the US military said. The US Navy MH-60 helicopter fired on and disabled the M/V Vela Nova "after the ship's civilian crew ignored repeated warnings from American forces," US Central Command said on X, adding that the vessel "is no longer transiting to Iran in violation of the US blockade." It was the third time the US, in a months-long war against Iran, has forcibly halted a vessel since reinstating the ports blockade on July 14.

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US President Donald Trump switched planes as he left a NATO summit in Turkey last month due to a possible threat, he told reporters on Tuesday. US media reported on Monday that Trump had secretly left Turkey aboard a smaller military aircraft following what was believed to be an Iranian threat. Trump told reporters that he had followed instructions from the Secret Service and the military. Trump was filmed boarding the presidential Boeing 747 in Ankara but was later moved unnoticed into an airport catering vehicle, which took him to an Air Force C-32A, the Washington Post reported, citing a US official familiar with the operation and material reviewed by the newspaper. The smaller aircraft flew Trump to the UK, while White House staff and journalists remained aboard the larger plane, apparently unaware that the president was no longer there. The operation was designed to give the impression that Trump had travelled aboard the presidential aircraft throughout, according to the Washington Post.

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Taiwan has condemned China's plan to hold a navy drill with Indonesia this month off the democratic island's east coast, saying Beijing seeks to create the "false impression" that it has jurisdiction over the area. China claims Taiwan is part of its territory and insists it has authority over the waters surrounding the island, which Taipei rejects. The Chinese defence ministry said one of its warships and an Indonesian frigate will conduct a "passage exercise" east of Taiwan in mid-August to "enhance the joint operational capabilities of the two navies" and "jointly safeguard regional peace and stability". Taiwan's top China policy body hit back, saying it "strongly condemned the CCP military provocation", referring to the Chinese Communist Party.

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COMPANY CALENDAR

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ABN AMRO Group NV - half year results

Balfour Beatty PLC - half year results

Bechtle AG - half year results

Bilfinger SE - half year results

Brenntag SE - half year results

E.ON SE - half year results

Formycon AG - half year results

Hannover Re SE - half year results

Hill & Smith PLC - half year results

Jenoptik AG - half year results

K+S AG - half year results

Spirax Group PLC - half year results

Tokio Marine Holdings Inc - Q1 results

Tui AG - Q3 results

Vestas Wind Systems AS - half year results

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TOP COMPANY NEWS

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The American artificial intelligence company Anthropic announced it will add an invisible watermark to text produced by its Claude chatbot so as to comply with EU regulations. But the company noted that this mark only means the text was processed by Claude, not that the chatbot actually generated it. The new feature unveiled will not be visible to humans and will remain in place even after text is cut-and-pasted.

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Alphabet's Google's artificial intelligence assistant Gemini has surpassed one billion monthly users, Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai announced, a week after a major reorganisation of the tech firm's AI division. It's our fastest growing product ever," and the 14th product to reach a billion users, Pichai posted on social media. The milestone, which Google calculated based on how many people use the Gemini app across its ecosystem, gives the search giant a victory amid a major overhaul of its AI division.

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AI startup Manus said it would resume "operating as an independent company," months after Beijing blocked Meta Platform's multi-billion-dollar acquisition of the Chinese-developed, Singapore-based company. Some data going back to late December will be deleted as a result, and Manus urged users impacted by the change to back up their data. "This is part of our separation from Meta; we must take this step to comply with regulatory requirements in specific parts of the world," Manus said in a blog post.

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Oracle announced a multi-year partnership with Quantinuum to bring hybrid quantum computing capabilities to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Oracle, an Austin, Texas-based software and cloud infrastructure company, and Broomfield, Colorado-based quantum computing firm Quantinuum said the collaboration will deploy Quantinuum's Helios system, described as the most accurate commercial quantum computer, inside a US OCI artificial intelligence data centre. The companies added the move enables customers to run hybrid quantum AI workloads alongside Oracle's high performance computing and graphics processing infrastructure.

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IBM said it had signed a USD240 million multi-year agreement with Together Computer to scale AI inference capabilities on IBM Cloud. San Francisco-based AI cloud infrastructure builder Together AI will work with IBM to deploy a large cluster of Nvidia Corp's HGX B300 systems on IBM Cloud, with expected availability beginning in the first quarter of 2027. Together AI will use the infrastructure to provide open-source model inference to its customers. Alan Peacock, general manager of IBM Cloud noted: "IBM and Nvidia are delivering scalable, economical, enterprise-grade AI infrastructure that can help Together AI accelerate innovation for the next generation of AI infrastructure."

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Boeing announced that it has signed offset implementation agreements with WZL-1 and WCBKT, to support Poland's AH-64E Apache helicopter fleet. The Arlington, Virginia-based aerospace manufacturer said the cooperation will establish long-term sustainment, maintenance and ground-support capabilities at the WZL-1 facility in Lodz. Under the agreements, WZL-1 will begin providing maintenance, repair and overhaul services for the Apache aircraft, while Boeing and the WCBKT evaluate Polish-made ground-support equipment for potential use with the fleet.

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Commonwealth Bank of Australia reported higher full-year profit, driving it to lift its annual dividend. The Sydney-based bank said net profit after tax from continuing operations on a statutory basis increased 7.7% to AUD10.91 billion in the financial year ended June 30, approximately USD7.71 billion, from AUD10.13 billion a year earlier. Attributable profit rose to AUD10.87 billion from AUD10.12 billion. Total operating income climbed 6.2% to AUD30.22 billion from AUD28.47 billion while total operating expenses grew 5.8% to AUD13.76 billion from AUD13.00 billion. CommBank declared a final dividend of AUD2.70 per share, bringing the total dividend to AUD5.05 per share, 4.1% higher from AUD4.85 a year ago.

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Lumentum said revenue more than doubled in its financial fourth quarter, as it hailed "broad-based traction". The San Jose, California-based optical and photonic products maker reported revenue of USD1.01 billion in its financial fourth quarter ended June 30, multiplied from USD480.7 million a year ago. It swung to a net loss of USD7.16 billion from income of USD213.3 million, or to a loss per share of USD84.65 from earnings per share of USD2.96.

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CoreWeave said its net loss widened to USD626 million in the quarter ended June 30 from USD290 million the year prior. The Livingston, New Jersey-based artificial intelligence cloud-computing company reported revenue more than doubled to USD2.58 billion from USD1.21 billion, but was outstripped by higher expenses of USD2.62 billion, up from USD1.19 billion. Revenue backlog was around USD104 billion as of June 30, the firm said. Diluted losses per share amounted to USD1.14, stretched from USD0.60 a year ago.

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Suncorp trimmed its total dividend after a sharp fall in full-year profit. The Brisbane, Australia-based insurance company said net profit after tax dropped 44% to AUD1.03 billion in the twelve months to June 30 from AUD1.82 billion a year prior. Basic earnings per share dropped to 95.74 Australian cents from 168.52 cents previously. Gross written premium rose 2.7% to AUD15.41 billion from AUD15.01 billion. Suncorp declared a final dividend of 52 Australian cents per share, trimming the total dividend by 23% to 69 cents per share from 90 cents a year ago. Suncorp announced a new AUD250 million share buyback programme following the completion of its AUD400 million buyback in financial 2026.

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AGL Energy reported a sharp rise in statutory profit for financial year 2026. The Sydney-based electricity generation company said attributable statutory profit after tax multiplied to AUD756 million in the twelve months to June 30 from AUD112 million a year earlier. Statutory earnings per share multiplied to 112.4 Australian cents from 16.7 cents a year ago. However, attributable underlying profit fell 1.7% to AUD631 million from AUD642 million, with underlying EPS decreasing 1.9% to 93.8 cents per share from 95.6 cents. Revenue for the year declined 5.2% to AUD13.59 billion from AUD14.34 billion. AGL declared a final dividend of 26 Australian cents per share, bringing the total dividend to 50 cents per share, up 4.2% from 48 cents a year prior.

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Cancom reported falling revenue while still swinging to pretax profit in the second quarter. The Munich-based information technology company said it was "not entirely satisfied with our performance in the first half of the year." In the quarter ending June 30, revenue fell 6.1% to EUR368.9 million from EUR393.2 million in the same quarter a year ago. For the first half of the year, revenue fell 3.5% to EUR775.9 million from EUR803.8 million the year before. The company swung to quarterly pretax profit of EUR5.6 million from a loss of EUR1.3 million the year prior. For the half, pretax profit multiplied to EUR16.2 million from EUR3.2 million the year before. Cancom attributed its results to "delayed investment decisions on the part of our customers".

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T-Mobile US has sold a 800 megahertz spectrum portfolio to Grain Management for USD2.9 billion in cash. The Bellevue, Washington-based wireless telephone network operator will also acquire 600 megahertz spectrum licenses from Grain, a Washington, DC-based private investment firm, in the exchange. Back in March of 2025, T-Mobile agreed to the divestment, noting that Grain would market the spectrum to infrastructure industry operators and both rural and regional operators.

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By Holly Munks, Alliance News reporter

Comments and questions to newsroom [at] alliancenews.com