Valneva against Covid-19. Valneva and Dynavax sign a commercial partnership for an inactivated, adjuvanted vaccine against Covid-19. Dynavax will provide the adjuvant to produce up to 190 million doses of vaccine over five years as part of Valneva's contract with the U.K. government, announced at the same time. Clinical trials are scheduled to begin in December 2020. Marketing authorization is possible in the second half of 2021. In total, the U.K. contract could bring in €1.37 billion to the company, if all options are activated.

Arm will fly the US flag. SoftBank seals an agreement with Nvidia to sell the British semiconductor company, Arm Holdings, for $40 billion. Nvidia will honor more than half of the transaction with its own shares. It will be necessary to obtain the green light from many regulators. As a result, the merger may not be finalized until March 2022. SoftBank would then have 6.7 to 8.1% of the American group's capital (part of the price is linked to financial performance criteria).

Banking secrecy. Credit Suisse and UBS Group are in negotiations for a merger, according to the financial news blog Inside Paradeplatz. Axel Weber (UBS) and Urs Rohner (Credit Suisse) are reportedly in talks. The project, called "Signal", was due to be unveiled at the beginning of 2021. Banking secrecy is no longer what it used to be.

A second contender for Milan. Euronext will not be alone in the race to buy out the Milan Stock Exchange, since Deutsche Börse has also made its bid official, while Reuters revealed today that SIX (Zurich Stock Exchange) has made the best offer. However, Euronext could be ahead of the game for having taken care to make an offer with the support of the Italian depository bank. This tactical move is likely to reassure Italy, which is known to be very reluctant to transfer control of its jewels abroad, and rightly so.

TikTok's future is still unclear. In the end, it is Oracle that has won TikTok US bid, at the expense of Microsoft. The transaction has yet to receive the green light from US authorities. ByteDance had notified Microsoft on Sunday that its offer had been retooled. But contrary to what had been mentioned, it would be a kind of partnership with Oracle, through which the Chinese would keep the source code of its application. Not sure that the White House appreciates.

New acquisition in biotech. Gilead will spend about $21 billion to buy American biotech company Immunomedics, specialized in oncology. Gilead is offering $88 per share, more than double the current price, which had already risen quite a bit recently. Immunomedics markets Trodelvy, a treatment for an aggressive form of breast cancer.

New offensive on Metro. Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky launched on Sunday a new takeover bid for Metro AG (in which he holds 29.99%) at EUR 8.48 per share, a slight premium on the last closing price (EUR 8.316). In June 2019, he failed to gain control after raising 41.70% of the capital. This time, the offer has no minimum threshold, which could lead to a creeping takeover.

Here we go again for AZN. AstraZeneca is resuming clinical trials of its coronavirus vaccine. The suspension will have been of short duration, following the identification of a case presenting a mystery illness. The candidate vaccine is considered to be the most advanced against Covid-19.

In other news. Swiss (Deutsche Lufthansa) offers its employees wage cuts to avoid job cuts. Soccer star Neymar formalizes his contract with Puma after 15 years at Nike. Nikola denies the accusations of the Hindenburg fund, which accuses the company of being a vast swindle, which does not prevent a third round of cuts of more than 10%. The American gym operator Town Sports bankrupt. Burckhardt Compression wants to take full control of the Chinese Shenyang Yuanda. Nokia signs a contract in the Philippines.