British chemicals empire Ineos feels the squeeze
FT News Briefing
Forhecz Topher
4.4 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 14 November 2025
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Oracle’s enormous borrowing to fund a push into artificial intelligence computing has spooked investors, Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s heavily indebted empire, Ineos, is under increasing financial pressure, and we take a look at a glaring hole in US inflation data. Plus, the FT’s Sonja Hutson reports back from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, as part of a new FT series.
Mentioned in this podcast:
Oracle hammered in tech sell-off over its huge AI bet
Ineos debt sell-off accelerates amid fears over European chemicals sector
‘Big Short’ investor Michael Burry to close hedge fund as he warns on valuations
The Bethlehem Project: An immigration raid divides a community
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Today’s FT News Briefing was produced by Henry Larson, Victoria Craig, Sonja Hutson, and Marc Filippino. Our show was mixed by Kelly Garry. Additional help from David da Silva. The FT’s acting co-head of audio is Topher Forhecz. The show’s theme music is by Metaphor Music.
Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good morning from the Financial Times. |
| 0:04.0 | Today is Friday, November 14th, and this is your FT News briefing. |
| 0:08.5 | Oracle stock has been hammered lately, and a European chemical's heavyweight is buckling under the pressure of the industry. |
| 0:15.4 | Plus, we take a look at the little town of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. |
| 0:19.5 | Growing up, I thought Bethlehem was just like your average small town. |
| 0:24.5 | Recently, though, I realized we're really in the center of a lot of things. |
| 0:30.0 | I'm Mark Filipino, and here's the news you need to start your day. |
| 0:43.9 | Tech stocks fell on Wall Street again yesterday. |
| 0:46.4 | It's been a rough ride for them over the past month, |
| 0:49.3 | and Oracle has been hit particularly hard. |
| 0:52.9 | Its shares are down almost 30% over the past month. |
| 0:56.3 | That's close to twice the fall of Meta, which is the next worst-performing big cloud computing company. Investors are so skittish about Oracle because of |
| 1:02.5 | its massive investment into artificial intelligence chips and data centers. That's largely been |
| 1:07.6 | because of deals to supply computing capacity to OpenAI. |
| 1:14.3 | Oracle borrowed a lot of money to fund those commitments, |
| 1:18.5 | and investors have also sold off its corporate bonds in the past month. |
| 1:22.2 | Oracle executives believe the ends will justify the means, though. It sees its OpenAI deals generating $300 billion in revenue by 2032. |
| 1:33.7 | A heavily indebted chemicals empire is coming under more and more financial pressure. |
| 1:39.5 | NEOS is one of Britain's largest privately owned companies, and it's now being hit by concerns over Europe's |
| 1:45.4 | flailing chemical sector. Credit analysts say they're worried about the future of Ineos. You're going to tell |
| 1:50.8 | us more as the FTs Ewan Healy. Hi, Ewan. Hello. So first off, just give me a little bit of background |
| 1:56.1 | about Ineos as a company. So Enos is one of Europe's largest chemical companies. |
... |
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