Breaking News Today – Wednesday 18 March 2026

Business News Today 

Mr Price Explains its Expansion Plan After NKD Purchase

South African retailer ‌Mr Price, may enter one more international market after its recent expansion into Europe, but has no plans for a worldwide footprint, its chairman said during its investor presentation yesterday. The major clothing and homewares group in Southern Africa, ​said it expects to close its purchase of German-based discount retailer NKD Group ​in March still with plans to expand NKD into Central and Eastern Europe, as outlined in its ⁠overseas strategy during an investor presentation on the deal.

The group’s board had narrowed its long-term offshore mergers and acquisitions focus to only two ​regions after reviewing opportunities worldwide. “Priority number one being Central and Eastern Europe and that’s a growth platform on a 10 to 20 year basis. So it might expand, might become ​Southern Europe in ten years time or whatever,” Payne said. By 2030, the European business aims to generate 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) in annual sales and deliver a double-digit operating margin, driven by more store openings, ⁠expansion in ​Germany, Poland and Italy and tight cost control, ​Blair said.

Mistral Unveils New Enterprise AI Models

Enterprise AI projects often fail due to a disconnect between the Ai models they’re using and the lack of don’t understand their business. The models are often trained on the internet, rather than decades of institutional knowledge such as workflows and deep seated system understanding. French AI startup, Mistral, has positioned their business to bridge that divide and sees a unique opportunity in the bespoke AI development market. Yesterday the company revealed its Mistral Forge, a platform that lets enterprises build custom Ai models trained on their own data. 

Mistral announced the platform at Nvidia’s annual GTC developer and technology conference, which this year has focused predominantly on AI agentic models for enterprises. Mistral has this week also announced their new Mistral Small 4 Ai model – a hybrid model optimised for general chat, coding, agentic tasks, and complex reasoning. Its architecture supports both text and image inputs, making it versatile for a wide range of applications.

Stealth Mode – New AI Model Mystery

A powerful artificial intelligence model that appeared anonymously on a developer platform last week has sparked speculation that Chinese startup DeepSeek may be quietly testing its next-generation system ahead of an official launch. The free model, called Hunter Alpha, surfaced on the AI gateway platform OpenRouter last week without any developer attribution and was later described by the platform as a “stealth model.”

Neither DeepSeek ​nor OpenRouter has identified the model’s creator and they did not respond to requests for comment. Hunter Alpha’s profile page describes it as a ​1-trillion-parameter model, meaning it was trained using roughly one trillion adjustable values that determine how the system processes language ⁠and generates responses. Models with more parameters generally require significantly more computing power to operat

Breaking Business and Market News Shorts:  

• Tools for Humanity (TFH), the startup behind “proof of human” Ai company World, has released its new beta human verification tool “AgentKit”, designed to support the safe build-out of agentic commerce, the fast-growing practice of using AI programs to browse the web and make purchases on a user’s behalf.
• Saudi Arabia is providing larger oil customers the option of receiving part of their allocations for April via their Red Sea port of Yanbu as a counter-measure to supply disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz. Oil Customers who select to utilise Yanbu, may only get a portion of their monthly supply due to volume constraints on the supply pipeline to the port, according to reports from local traders. 
• China’s Shanghai Composite dipped -0.3% to below 4,040 today, extending losses for a fifth consecutive session as geopolitical uncertainties in the Middle East and volatile oil prices kept investors cautious. The Iran war intensified this week with Tehran stepping up attacks on regional energy infrastructure
• Gold dipped below the $500 mark to around $4,990 per this morning, near its lowest level in a month, as investors assess the potential impact of fluctuating oil prices on inflation ahead of the US Federal Reserve’s monetary policy decision later today. Expectations is that the Fed will leave interest rates unchanged.
• Brent crude futures fell to around $100 per barrel, and looking to break below that level this morning, shedding gains from the the previous session as investors navigated ongoing hostilities in the Middle East and uncertainty surrounding the closed trade route through the Strait of Hormuz.

Markets by Numbers 

Currency markets indicate the US dollar trading flat against major currencies today. The Greenback is trading against the Euro at 1.15406 while trading against the Pound at 1.33628. The Yen is currently trading at 158.79 to the dollar. The rand (ZAR), is currently trading at R16.64 against the US dollar.

Commodities:  

• Gold futures have slid to below the $5000 mark, around -0.4% lower this morning, and currently at around $4984.70 per ounce.  
• Copper prices are trending -0.8% lower today, with prices currently around $5.6804 per pound
• Silver futures are trending over -0.9% lower today, and currently trading at around $78.600 per ounce.
• Platinum futures are trending -1.7% lower this morning, and currently trading at $2098.20, While Palladium prices have dived by more than -2.6% this morning, and currently trading around $1589.00 per ounce.
• Brent crude oil prices are down by around -2% this morning, with prices currently at $101.35 with WTI trading at $9.33 – down by around -3% today.
• Cocoa futures are trending lower, and down around -0.7% this morning, with prices currently trading around $3325 per ton. 
• Coffee futures are trending marginally higher today, and trading at around $2.9487 per pound

Crypto Currencies: 

• Bitcoin prices are trending 0.5% higher this morning, and trading at around $74 268 per coin currently 
• Ether prices have gained by around 0.5% today, and currently trading around $2330.98
• $Trumpcoin are currently trading higher at around $3.747

(All prices quoted at approximately 07H10 Central African Time) 

African General News Briefs:

• The Republic of Congo ’s President Denis Sassou N’Guesso has been controversially reelected for a fifth consecutive term, according to provisional results announced yesterday by the authorities. Sassou N’Guesso won 94,82% of the vote, Interior Minister Raymond Zephirin Mboulou announced on state television. Opposition candidates had been jailed prior to the election leading to low voter turnout. The 82-year-old president has been ruling in the Central African country since 1997 in a state that boasts one of the largest oil reserves in sub-Saharan Africa.
• The Republic of Congo’s finances have weakened, according to a statement by the International Monetary Fund. This had added strain on ​the region with credit availability tightening, debt repayments increasing and banks heavily exposed to sovereign debt. In a post-financing assessment released on Monday, the IMF reported that the Republic of Congo’s economic growth likely ticked up slightly to 2.4% in 2025, compared with 2.1% in ​2024, though it said weak public investment and energy supply disruptions constrained ​broader economic activity.