FTSE 100 Winners and Losers: Three Structural Themes Reshaping Markets
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.
Key Components
The Destruction: WPP and Diageo
WPP's removal from the FTSE 100—its first exclusion since 1998—marks more than a bad year.
The Creation: Commodities and Infrastructure
Rolls-Royce deserves particular attention. Its power generation business benefits from AI data center buildouts—infrastructure that enables the same AI disrupting WPP.
The Framework
AI destroys value in exposed incumbents (advertising, potentially media). It creates value in infrastructure adjacencies (power generation, cooling, semiconductors).
Key Insight
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.
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FourWeekMBA x Business Engineer | Updated 2026
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.
The Destruction: WPP and Diageo
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 — as explored in the economics of AI compute 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.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is FTSE 100 Winners and Losers: Three Structural Themes Reshaping Markets?
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.
What is the destruction: wpp and diageo?
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.
What is the creation: commodities and infrastructure?
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.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
