The Bank of Japan raised rates to 1.25% overnight — the highest since 1995 — but the yen fell anyway, which tells you something about how markets read the move. Governor Ueda’s accompanying comments were hawkish enough in tone, but traders appear unconvinced that the BoJ has either the appetite or the runway to tighten meaningfully further. The yen’s weakness here matters for sterling and dollar positioning, and for anyone with Japan exposure it raises the question of whether this is the ceiling for this cycle.

Venezuela is close to a deal that would shift roughly $4bn in gold reserves from London to New York, unlocking access for the interim government of Delcy Rodríguez. The detail worth watching is that this is disputed gold — the legal and political wrangling over Venezuelan assets held at the Bank of England has been running for years. If the deal closes, it represents a significant shift in how Western governments are choosing to engage with Caracas, and it will move sentiment on Venezuelan sovereign risk.

Warren Buffett is stepping down as chair of Berkshire Hathaway, with his son Howard named as successor. Warren will take the title of chair emeritus. This has been flagged as the eventual plan for some time, but the formal announcement changes the succession picture. Greg Abel remains CEO-designate for operations; Howard’s role is explicitly governance-focused. Markets will want to see whether this triggers any repositioning in Berkshire’s shareholder base.

On AI infrastructure, Crusoe has raised $3.9bn to build large-scale data centres and what it’s calling small modular AI factories, valuing the company at $30.9bn. That’s a significant number for a business most outside the sector won’t have heard of, and it reflects continued institutional appetite for the picks-and-shovels layer of the AI build-out rather than the model layer itself.

Separately, emails surfaced in litigation involving Microsoft and OpenAI show a Microsoft executive describing AI scraping of news content as “the largest theft of labour in human history.” The framing is striking given Microsoft’s own position as an OpenAI backer and a major user of web-scraped training data. It adds texture to the ongoing legal exposure both companies face from publishers, and may complicate the OpenAI IPO narrative if it surfaces in discovery.

Google DeepMind has launched a new institute explicitly designed to surface disagreement about AGI timelines and governance — including disagreement with Google itself. The announcement is unusual in that it formally institutionalises dissent. Whether that’s genuine or reputational positioning ahead of regulatory scrutiny is an open question, but Brussels and Westminster will notice.

The UN General Assembly high-level week begins in New York on Monday, with several bilateral meetings expected on the sidelines that could move the dial on Ukraine, Middle East ceasefire diplomacy, and trade. Worth watching for any joint statements that shift the diplomatic temperature heading into autumn.

Sources

Al Jazeera, BBC News, FT, The Economist, Politico, Guardian, TechCrunch, Ars Technica — 2026-09-18