It looks like the US Steel takeover deal is off.

Live from the UK, this is the Marketplace Morning Report from the BBC World Service.

I'm Stuart Clarkson in Fort Leanna Byrne.

Good morning.

President Biden has decided to block the $15 billion takeover of US steel

by the Japanese company Nippon Steel.

This is according to multiple US media reports. here's the BBC's Mariko Oi.

There were reports that President Biden will likely block the deal.

And that's despite reports that Nippon Steel has proposed to give the US government a veto power

over any potential cuts to US Steel's production capacity, as well as a 10-year guarantee that it would

not reduce production capacity in U.S. steel's mills. That was one of the major concerns of the

Union of U.S. steel that Nippon will eventually cut steel production in the United States

and maybe start importing cheaper steel from Japan, for example, which, of course,

would affect the employee's job security.

Mariko Oy there, let's do the numbers.

And South Korea's main index, the COPSY, finished the day up almost 2%, recovering from a three-week

low, despite authorities making a failed attempt to detain the impeached President

Yun-Suk Yul. And in China, Apple is offering rare discounts of up to $70 on some iPhones.

It's after Huawei slashed the prices of its high-end smartphones by 20%. Now, analysts say the price

of gold is set to rise further in 2025, but perhaps not as much as it did last year.

It was up 27% the best year for gold since 2010.

My colleague Leanna Byrne spoke to Ollie Hansen, head of commodity strategy at the Danish Investment Bank, Saxo Bank.

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