Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Thursday, February 4th. This is your F-T news briefing.

UK and EU regulators are set to pursue antitrust probes into a $40 billion deal between

two computer chip giants. Google's threatening to pull out of Australia, and Microsoft hopes to

benefit, plus we'll ask why Mario Draghi was the top pick to form Italy's next government,

and then we'll take a close look at the surprising winter during the pandemic,

discount retailers. I'm Mark Filipino, and here's the news you need to start your day.

British-based chip designer Arm Holdings has become a huge player in the market for smartphones and

other devices that require low-power chips. That's a big reason European and British regulators

are now both set to pursue in-depth antitrust probes into Nvidia's plan to buy Arm

from the tech group Softbank. US regulators are also looking into it.

The $40 billion deal was announced last year. Arm now licenses technology to a variety of companies

that compete with Nvidia. The concern is that Arm will lose this neutrality if Nvidia takes over,

but Nvidia's chief executive, Jensen Huang, said Arm would retain its neutral status under his

company's ownership. Mario Draghi has agreed to try and form Italy's next government.

Draghi is the well-respected former president of the European Central Bank, but he could face

trouble uniting Italy's different parties. I'm joined by the FT's Italy correspondent Miles

Johnson to talk more about the challenges he faces. Miles Draghi jumping in here to form a

coalition government is kind of a surprise given that he's never really expressed an interest

in electoral politics. Why is he diving in now? Well, firstly, yes, he has repeatedly

told people close to him that he had no interest in getting into the difficult world of Italian

politics, but this is a moment of acute national crisis. Italy is suffering obviously from the

coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic crisis from that pandemic, and he is effectively

...