New acquisition. MetLife announced today the acquisition of Versant Health for $1.68 billion from a group of investors led by Centerbridge Partners and FFL Partners.

You promised. Tiffany wants the U.S. courts to rule quickly on its dispute with LVMH, to force the French group to pay the purchase price provided for the transaction. LVMH seems to have given up on the transaction, unless it obtains more advantageous terms, but the American company is not having it. it believes that if the courts rule in its favor before the deadline of the initial agreements, the French group will have to honor the acquisition.

Ray-Ban featuring Facebook. EssilorLuxottica signs a partnership with Facebook in "smart glasses". Declined under the Ray-Ban brand, these glasses should make it possible to have data and images based on augmented reality in one's field of vision. "Imagine a pair of glasses that brings, in 3D, a layer of additional useful and relevant information depending on the context, in addition to what your eyes observe", says the description of the future product.

A discount for Alstom. The announcement fell at the end of yesterday's session, but it should be mentioned again: Alstom will finalize the acquisition of Bombardier Transportation at a revised, lower price, at €5.3 billion compared to the €5.8 to €6.2 billion initially envisaged. This revision follows unforeseen difficulties within the Canadian group's rail branch, which had to take an exceptional charge of €435 million this summer.

Carmakers struggle. New car registrations in EU and EFTA countries fell by 3.7% in July compared to the same month in 2019, and by 17.6% in August. Over the first 8 months of the year, the European car market fell by 32.9%, about 3.5 million fewer vehicles than in 2019 over the same period. These figures are not surprising, since the statistics by country were already known.

Spotify vs. Apple. Spotify is urging competition authorities to look into Apple's new all-in-one offering, which it accuses of abusing its dominant position. "We call on the competition authorities to act urgently to curb Apple's anti-competitive behavior, which, if left unchecked, will cause irreparable damage to the developer community and threaten our collective freedoms to listen, learn, create and connect," the Swedish group said in its statement. Recently, several players in the digital world have been scolding the firm for its hegemonic practices.

New generation. Sony's PS5 will be available from November 12 in the United States and November 19 in France. Microsoft is due to launch its new console on November 10. The two competitors have fairly similar price positioning. In the previous round, Sony sold twice as many PS4s as Microsoft's Xbox.

Snowball effect. Snowflake doubles on the stock market (+130%!) for its first listing on Wall Street. The company that offers cloud-based data storage and exploitation services has been incredibly popular. The appetite for technology is intact, despite the decline of the Nasdaq yesterday.

Not radical enough? Donald Trump hinted that he didn't like what he heard about the terms of the TikTok project between Oracle and ByteDance. American authorities have not yet decided on the project, which would leave ByteDance a majority stakeholder.

In other news. Delivery Hero acquires Glovo's activities in Latin America for approximately €230 million. ABN Amro and Oddo BHF enter into a strategic partnership to "combine their brokerage activities" in the Benelux.