Stocks Slide as Virus Disrupts Travel and Trade Between U.K and Europe: Live Updates

• European stock markets and the British pound tumbled on Monday after some trade and travel ties between Britain and the rest of the continent were cut off in an effort to contain a new fast-spreading variant of the coronavirus

• The slide was expected to continue on Wall Street. Futures predicted the S&P 500 would fall 2 percent when trading starts.

• Over the weekend, nearby countries shut their borders to travelers from Britain — and some cases, British freight — as London and the surrounding area were put into a lockdown after the government’s health secretary said a new strain of the coronavirus was “out of control.”

• The Stoxx Europe 600 index fell 3.2 percent. The FTSE 250, which contains more domestic stocks in Britain than the benchmark FTSE 100, declined 3.6 percent. The CAC in France dropped 3.2 percent and the DAX in Germany was 3.5 percent weaker. Most stock indexes in Asia also ended the day lower. The Nikkei 225 in Japan fell 0.2 percent and the Hang Seng index in Hong Kong was 0.7 percent lower.

• The British pound fell against all other major currencies. It declined 1.8 percent against the dollar, the sharpest one-day fall in nine months. The Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and France were among countries to ban travelers from Britain. France also stopped freight imports from Britain, a move that will worsen border disruptions and has raised concerns about the supply of fresh food.

• The more contagious variant of the virus is expected to mean social restrictions will last longer in Britain, possibly many months while the vaccine is being rolled out. Analysts at Berenberg, a private bank, cut their forecast for the British economy early next year, saying it was likely to grow only 3 percent in the first quarter, down from 5.5 percent.

• At the same time, the risk of Britain ending its transition period with the European Union at the end of the year without a trade deal are rising. The two sides missed another Sunday deadline to come to an agreement, but talks are continuing on Monday.

• In the United States, Congress reached a deal on a $900 billion stimulus package, which is expected to include $600 stimulus payments to millions of Americans and a boost to unemployment benefits.

• Energy prices fell. Futures of West Texas Intermediate declined 3.4 percent to $47.44 a barrel.

On Monday, Tesla will be the largest company ever added to the S&P 500, and, with a market capitalization of $650 billion, the sudden weight it will throw into the market could have strange consequences, reports Matt Phillips.

A former tech industry insider is now playing a key role in the wave of antitrust lawsuits against the giant tech companies.

Dina Srinivasan, who once worked as a digital advertising executive at WPP, the world’s largest advertising agency, quit her job three years ago after becoming disillusioned by the immense power large wielded by companies like Facebook and Google, Daisuke Wakabayashi reports in The New York Times.

“It just felt like, OK, Facebook and Google were going to win and everybody else is going to lose and that’s just the way the cards were stacked,” Ms. Srinivasan said. “I don’t think this was widely understood.”

She took up the case against them instead, writing academic papers with an insider’s perspective that reframed the antitrust thinking about the companies. And her timing was perfect.

Federal regulators and state attorneys general had expressed growing unease about Big Tech’s unchecked power. But many had struggled with how to bring a case because of the complexity of the companies and the markets they competed in. Arguing that these companies were harming consumers was also difficult because many of their products are free.

“Her papers are just very clearly on point about the actual conduct of the platforms and its competitive significance,” Marshall Steinbaum, an assistant professor at the University of Utah’s economics department, wrote on Twitter. “They’re helpful to enforcers and come from a perspective of someone who obviously knows the industry and the facts.”

In recent months, mounting concerns about the outsize influence of tech’s most powerful companies have set off a cascade of antitrust lawsuits, with three cases targeting Google and two suits against Facebook.

As the legal arguments take shape, there is evidence of Ms. Srinivasan’s fingerprints.

Since the release of the highly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 video game on Dec. 10, thousands of gamers have created viral videos featuring a multitude of glitches and bugs — many hilarious — that mar the game and render it virtually unplayable for many users.

So many gamers demanded refunds from distributors last week that they overwhelmed Sony’s customer service representatives and even briefly took down one of its corporate sites. In response, Sony and Microsoft said they would offer full refunds to anyone who bought Cyberpunk 2077 through their online stores; Sony even removed the title, Mike Isaac and Kellen Browning report in The New York Times.

Cyberpunk’s rollout is one of the most visible disasters in the history of video games — a high-profile flameout during the holiday shopping season by a studio widely considered an industry darling. It shows the pitfalls gaming studios can face when building so-called Triple-A games, titles backed by years of development and hundreds of millions of dollars.

“There was so much there, but they just didn’t pay attention to the details,” said Billy Marte, a gamer who bought into the high expectations around Cyberpunk, which was developed by the Polish studio CD Projekt Red. “It’s evident that this game was rushed.”

CD Projekt Red’s stock has dropped 41 percent since early December. Inside the studio, there has been infighting and finger-pointing. In a contentious meeting with board members on Thursday, CD Projekt Red employees pressed executives on the game’s unrealistic deadlines and false promises.

Insiders said they saw the problems coming for months, based on CD Projekt Red’s history of game development and warning signs that Cyberpunk 2077 might not live up to its sky-high expectations.

• The Federal Reserve on Friday said that the financial system’s biggest banks had the wherewithal to withstand a severe economic shock from the pandemic, and that they would be able to return more money to shareholders early next year as long as they show that they are profitable. In June, the Fed put temporary caps on shareholder payouts by the nation’s biggest banks. Minutes after the regulator’s announcement on Friday, JPMorgan Chase said it would buy back $30 billion of its shares during the first three months of 2021.

• In a novel case, federal prosecutors on Friday brought criminal charges against an executive at Zoom, the videoconferencing company, accusing him of engaging in a conspiracy to disrupt and censor video meetings commemorating the Tiananmen Square massacre. He is accused of working with others to log into the video meetings under aliases using profile pictures that related to terrorism or child pornography. Afterward, Mr. Jin would report the meetings for violating terms of service, prosecutors said.