The FTSE 100’s biggest moves in 2025 aren’t random fluctuations—they’re signals of structural forces reshaping entire industries. Reading them correctly requires structural thinking rather than stock-picking intuition.
WPP’s removal from the FTSE 100—its first exclusion since 1998—marks more than a bad year. AI is making advertising production cheaper and faster, threatening the agency model’s core value proposition. The CEO’s departure and promised January strategy reset signal a company searching for relevance.
Diageo fell 34% to a decade low. Alcohol consumption has dropped to levels not seen since 1990, compounded by Trump tariffs affecting US operations. This isn’t cyclical weakness—it’s a generational shift in consumption patterns meeting trade policy headwinds.
Both cases illustrate second-order effects: AI doesn’t just change technology companies; it disrupts anyone whose business model depends on information asymmetry or creative services pricing.
Fresnillo (+100%): Silver demand from solar panels
Endeavour Mining (+161.5%): Gold’s 60% rise flows directly to profits given fixed production costs
Rolls-Royce (+95.2%): Aerospace recovery plus data center power generation demand
Rolls-Royce deserves particular attention. Its power generation business benefits from AI data center buildouts—infrastructure that enables the same AI disrupting WPP. The business model positioned on enabling infrastructure captures value while those positioned on replaceable services lose it.
The Framework
AI destroys value in exposed incumbents (advertising, potentially media). It creates value in infrastructure adjacencies (power generation, cooling, semiconductors). Commodities benefit from energy transition and geopolitical uncertainty regardless of AI.
Successful 2025 companies had structural tailwinds. Struggling ones faced structural disruption. Identifying which side of that divide a company sits on matters more than quarterly earnings.
Gennaro is the creator of FourWeekMBA, which reached about four million business people, comprising C-level executives, investors, analysts, product managers, and aspiring digital entrepreneurs in 2022 alone | He is also Director of Sales for a high-tech scaleup in the AI Industry | In 2012, Gennaro earned an International MBA with emphasis on Corporate Finance and Business Strategy.
