Walmart, Nvidia, Merck KGaA, Applied Materials, Henkel, National Grid, Electricité de France, KBC, Snam, Bouygues, NN Group, Burberry and Vallourec are among companies reporting their earnings today.

Update on Ilva. ArcelorMittal will manage the Ilva steel mill in Italy until May 2020, when the Italian courts will rule on its request to cancel the purchase, according to a local industrial manager, informed by the president of the steel company in Italy. ArcelorMittal decided to terminate the contract, considering that Italy had not fulfilled its commitments regarding guarantees against the environmental consequences of previous operations.

Qiagen in sights? Thermo Fisher is interested in Qiagen, Bloomberg learned, which boosted Dutch ADR by 10% yesterday, bringing the capitalization to $8 billion. The American, who weighs $120 billion on the stock market, has the means to achieve his ambitions.

Icahn takes a stand. According to the Wall Street Journal, activist investor Carl Icahn invested $1.2 billion in HP Inc. to force it to merge with Xerox. Icahn already owned 10.6% of Xerox and thus rose to 4.24% of HP, to lobby for a merger, which would be "child's play", according to the billionaire.

Marriage of reason. Yahoo Japan (renamed Z Holdings by its parent company Softbank) has confirmed that it is negotiating a merger with Line Corporation, in discussions with its parent company Naver Corp. This $27 billion (cumulative capitalization) marriage would unite two major but loss-making payment operators in Japan.

Smith & Wesson independent. American Outdoor Brands will split in two, on the one hand outdoor products and on the other hand firearms, including the famous Smith & Wesson brand. The transaction, which could be completed in the second half of next year, will create two independent publicly traded companies. AOB is a small player with a limited capitalization of $433 million.

10 million in 24 hours. Walt Disney's bet in streaming seems to be successful, since the group claims 10 million subscribers on the first day of launch of the service, a level that it took HBO 4 years to reach: the stock pulled up the Dow Jones yesterday, on a gain of 7%. The Disney+ service broke the sector's prices with a rate of USD 6.99 per month, much lower for example than that of the star Netflix. Disney hopes to exceed 60 million subscribers by 2024, relying in particular on its powerful brands, such as Star Wars, Pixar and Marvel.

WeWork’s Chinese rival targets US listing. According to Bloomberg, Ucommune,  the largest rival to WeWork in China, plans an initial public offering in the US in December.

In other news. Alibaba announced yesterday that it is applying for a second line of quotation in Hong Kong, raising $13 billion. The results published by Cisco are disappointing, leading to a 5% drop in action after the session. Facebook has deleted 5.4 billion fake user accounts since the beginning of the year, compared to 2.1 billion last year at the same time. Mike Henry will become CEO of BHP Group in January. Sika opens a mortar factory in Ethiopia. Onex sells 9.8% of SIG Combibloc's share capital to institutional investors.