Wednesday newspaper round-up: Microsoft, Wedgwood, Sanofi CEO
By Michele Maatouk
Date: Wednesday 17 Sep 2025
(Sharecast News) - A long-coveted deal to slash US steel and aluminium tariffs to zero has been shelved on the eve of Donald Trump's state visit to Britain, the Guardian has learned. Ministers were poised to finalise a deal this week that would have reduced Trump's tariffs on British steel to zero, according to government officials. But that deal has been put on ice hours before the US president's arrival in the UK, in what steel industry figures privately described as a major blow. - Guardian
The UK is determined to resolve its standoff with the pharmaceutical industry and reverse a 10-year decline in NHS spending on medicines, the science minister has told MPs after a string of drugmakers cancelled projects worth nearly £2bn. Patrick Vallance, a former executive at drugmaker GSK, said the country needed to increase spending on medicines and reverse a decade of declining investment. - Guardian
Microsoft has announced plans to invest a record £22bn in the UK as Donald Trump touches down for his state visit. In its biggest-ever commitment to Britain, the US technology giant said it would spend billions on infrastructure, including the country's most powerful artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputer. - Telegraph
The Royal Household's fine china supplier has paused production amid a slump in demand for opulent crockery. Wedgwood, the almost 300-year-old British manufacturer, said it had temporarily paused operations at its factory in Barlaston, Staffordshire, blaming "lower demand in some of our key markets". - Telegraph
The group chief executive of Sanofi, the French multinational drugs company, has warned that he does not know where a potentially "negative loop" on UK investment will end if the government does not re-enter medicines pricing negotiations with the industry. Paul Hudson, a British businessman who has led Sanofi since 2019, said the recent announcements by three large pharma companies to scrap or pause investment in the country was for the first time at a "scale that makes me think maybe we have reached a point where we need to either get back to the table or there could be a difficult period ahead for everybody involved". - The Times
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