The European Commission approved Paramount-Skydance's roughly $110bn takeover of Warner Bros after the buyer agreed to sell its stake in a European film-distribution joint venture with Universal and to refrain from any film-distribution agreements with Universal in Europe for 10 years. The Commission said the commitments address its competition concerns and ensure the combined group's films will not be co-distributed with Universal or Disney.

The China Federation of Logistics & Purchasing (CFLP) released its China Public Procurement Development Report (2025) on the 22nd, showing national public procurement of 44 trillion yuan in 2025, down 2.22% YoY. The report states the public procurement market experienced a modest overall contraction while its structure continued to improve.

ING analyst Chris Turner said rising energy prices could prompt markets to reprice other central banks' rate-hike expectations, keeping low-yield currencies such as the yen and Swiss franc under pressure. He noted equities have held up despite higher energy costs, which may reduce the yen and franc's safe-haven appeal, but a more important factor "appears to be low rates and the slow pace of rate hikes by central banks." USD/JPY was down 0.2% at 162.90 after touching a 40-year high of 163.23 on Tuesday. USD/CHF was down 0.1% at 0.8118, near an overnight one-week high of 0.8133.