Caroline Hepker

That's according to a statement released by both countries yesterday.

In a separate announcement, Friedrich Merz's government said that it is seeking a 40% stake in the firm, subject to the approval of Parliament.

The news comes after Germany reached an agreement over the weekend with KNDS's family owners to take a stake in a deal valuing the business between 15 and 18 billion euros.

Now, the listing is set to be one of Europe's biggest in recent years.

France holds 50% of KNDS and has been planning to sell shares in the IPO in order to cut its stake to about 40%.

Okay, so those are our top stories for you today.

Now, looking at the market, stocks slumping.

We've got this tech sell-off that continues.

The KOSPI is down by almost 7% this morning, so a really big tumble there.

MSCI Asia-Pacific Index is down by 2.3% this after the SpaceX and Alphabet weakness that we saw in the session in the US yesterday.

NASDAQ futures this morning are also very weak.

They're down by 1.4%.

We're down nine-tenths of 1% for the US stocks today.

50 futures.

Oil is muted this morning.

Brent crude futures are down $77.60.

The barrels are down about four-tenths of 1%.

We get PMI data for France, Germany and the euro area.

We will also get results out of Mike Vaughan, a key AI stock later in the US.

And European car sales up by 3.6%, but they are cooling down.