TheChek News Flow

McLaren F1 team owner valued at more than £3bn in stake sale

Middle Eastern owners set to buy out minority shareholders in deal that crystallises big gains for investors including Ares

The middle eastern backers of McLaren Racing are set to buy out minority shareholders in a deal that values the Formula 1 team owner at more than £3bn, underscoring the turnaround in its fortunes under chief executive Zak Brown.

Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund Mumtalakat and Abu Dhabi investment group CYVN Holdings are close to confirming a deal to buy the 30 per cent stake owned by investors who stepped in with capital during the coronavirus pandemic, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

A £3bn valuation would be more than five times the £560mn ascribed to McLaren in the December 2020 fundraising. It would crystallise significant gains for investors including New York-based investment firm MSP Sports Capital, hedge fund UBS O’Connor and the Najafi Companies. Ares Management later also confirmed it had made a minority investment alongside MSP.

An announcement of the deal, first reported by Sky News, is due as soon as Tuesday. McLaren, Mumtalakat and Ares declined to comment. CYVN, which acquired McLaren’s automotive business and a minority stake in the racing arm earlier this year, did not respond to a request for comment.

McLaren has emerged as the dominant force in F1 over the past two years after languishing in the shadow of rivals Mercedes and Red Bull Racing for more than a decade.

The UK-based team last year won its first F1 constructors’ championship since 1998 but missed out on the drivers’ award.

But this season the team’s drivers, Australia’s Oscar Piastri and British teammate Lando Norris, are locked in a two-way battle to win the drivers’ championship, and McLaren is dominating the constructors championship.

The jump in the team’s valuation is also a result of the growth of F1 more broadly under the ownership of John Malone’s Liberty Media. F1 has embraced digital marketing and expanded its reach through the hit Netflix series Formula 1: Drive to Survive.

Brown joined McLaren in 2016 but results did not meaningfully improve until after he promoted Italian engineer Andrea Stella to team principal at the end of 2022.

Payments company Mastercard last week agreed to become McLaren’s title sponsor from 2026.

McLaren Racing also competes in the IndyCar US racing series and earlier this year set out plans to enter the World Endurance Championship, home of the 24 Hours of Le Mans race, from 2027.

The team is owned by McLaren Group Limited, the entity that is buying out its minority shareholders. Mumtalakat is the controlling shareholder of McLaren Group Limited, with CYVN holding a non-controlling stake.

Team led by Peking University researchers develops ‘world’s first’ rubber band that can convert body heat into electricity

Chinese scientists have created the world’s first rubber band that converts body heat into electricity, potentially paving the way for smartwatches and other wearable devices that will charge automatically.

The research team said the material combined elasticity with efficient thermoelectric conversion.

“Until now, all reported high-performance thermoelectric materials have realised only flexibility, rather than elasticity,” they wrote in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature last month.

Wearable devices currently need bulky batteries or frequent charging but the research raises the prospect of a ready and constant power supply that removes the need for charging.

This is achieved based on thermoelectric laws, whereby temperature differences can generate power – in the same way that the Watt steam engine converted the heat of boiling water into energy, paving the way for the first locomotives.

Since the human body temperature is usually around 37 degrees Celsius (98.6 Fahrenheit) and ambient temperatures typically range from 20 to 30 degrees, the Chinese team tried to harness the temperature difference and convert it into electrical energy.

Thermoelectric materials have been in use for years. For example, deep space probes rely on a radioactive isotope thermoelectric generator to power them when solar energy is unavailable.

But these are either inorganic materials that are “hard like stones” or organic materials that, although softer, perform poorly when stretched, according to Lei Ting, a materials scientist at Peking University’s School of Materials Science and Engineering and the corresponding author of the study.

“We are the first in the world to propose the concept of thermoelectric rubber,” he added.

Lei said that his team had been working to create a material that could bend, stretch and cling to the skin. “Such thermal devices are comfortable to wear and efficiently convert the body’s heat energy into electrical energy with less heat loss,” he said.

He added that, in theory, if the material did not break down or suffer additional damage, it would continue to supply power indefinitely.

The key innovation lies in the hybrid structure that blends and cross-links semiconducting polymers with elastic rubber. By engineering a nanofibre network within the material, the researchers said they had achieved an unprecedented level of stretchability while maintaining high electrical conductivity.

After this treatment, the material stretched to more than 850 per cent of its original length, the paper said. After being stretched to 150 per cent, it was able to recover more than 90 per cent of its original shape, a level comparable with natural rubber.

Special dopants, or doping agents – a small amount of a substance added to a material to alter its physical properties – further boosted performance, resulting in room-temperature thermoelectric properties that rival conventional inorganic materials of this type.

“This isn’t just about charging wearables,” Lei said, pointing to a much wider range of potential applications.

For example, it could be possible to power communications equipment in remote and isolated areas simply by lighting a fire.

The group is also planning to incorporate the material into clothing, which could both charge a mobile phone in the pocket and regulate body temperature by using its semiconductor wires to transfer body heat to the exterior of the clothing.

The innovation could also have applications in the medical field. For example, cardiovascular examinations currently require patients to wear an electronic device for a week to collect sufficient data.

This needs a relatively large battery and circuitry components, but the new material could allow medical sensors to be worn close to the body without the need for additional batteries.

The Chinese currency is already rising against the US dollar and will receive another boost if the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates

The Chinese yuan is set to continue making gains against the US dollar over the coming months, as China’s central bank sets strong daily reference rates for the currency and traders bet on possible US interest rate cuts, analysts said.

The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) set its strongest onshore yuan daily reference rate of the year on Friday, at 7.1030 per US dollar, with the yuan’s fixing rate gaining 0.65 per cent against the dollar over the month of August.

On Monday, the central bank set the daily reference rate just below that year-high peak, at 7.1072 per US dollar.

“We see the unusual appreciation bias in the PBOC’s daily fixing as a policy push to guide the yuan gradually stronger,” Goldman Sachs analysts said in a research note on Monday.

The analysts noted that historically, China’s central bank had tended to set the rate weaker than spot when the dollar was strong and the yuan faced depreciation pressure – a pattern not seen in recent market moves.

“This pre-emptive move by the PBOC should help the yuan catch up with peers and reduce the risk of a sharp appreciation later,” the note added.

In August, the offshore yuan rose by 1.21 per cent against the dollar and was trading at 7.1279 per US dollar as of Monday noon.

Those gains came even as the yuan had a deeply negative carry, meaning that investors earned less by holding yuan compared with other currencies, according to Goldman Sachs.

But with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell delivering dovish remarks in late August, signalling a possible interest rate cut in September, the carry between the dollar and lower-yielding currencies such as the yuan could soon narrow.

If that happens, the dollar’s decline could accelerate and the yuan could make further gains, analysts at Huatai Securities said in a Monday note.

Goldman Sachs expects the yuan to strengthen to 7.0 per dollar by the end of the year, with onshore and offshore rates likely converging towards the central bank’s daily fixing.

With greater stability in China’s economy and yuan assets still undervalued, the Chinese currency has “considerable room” for further appreciation, Huatai Securities said.

Gary Ng, a senior economist at Natixis, also held an optimistic outlook towards the yuan if the Fed moved ahead with a rate cut.

“Chinese exporters may also begin converting their accumulated foreign currency receipts into yuan,” he said.

Officials suspect jamming operation forced jet carrying EU commission president to land in Bulgaria using paper maps

A suspected Russian interference attack targeting Ursula von der Leyen disabled GPS navigation services at a Bulgarian airport and forced the European Commission president’s plane to land using paper maps.

A jet carrying von der Leyen to Plovdiv on Sunday afternoon was deprived of electronic navigational aids while on approach to the city’s airport, in what three officials briefed on the incident said was being treated as a Russian interference operation.

“The whole airport area GPS went dark,” said one of the officials. After circling the airport for an hour, the plane’s pilot took the decision to land the plane manually using analogue maps, they added. “It was undeniable interference.”

The Kremlin and European Commission have been approached for comment.

So-called GPS jamming and spoofing, which distorts or prevents access to the satellite-based navigation system, was traditionally deployed by military and intelligence services to defend sensitive sites, but has increasingly been used by countries such as Russia as a means of disrupting civilian life.

EU governments have warned that rising GPS jamming blamed on Russia risks causing a major air disaster by essentially blinding commercial aircraft mid-journey.

GPS jamming incidents have risen significantly in the Baltic Sea and eastern European states close to Russia in recent years, affecting planes, boats and civilians who use the service for day-to-day navigation.

Von der Leyen was flying from Warsaw to the central Bulgarian city to meet the country’s prime minister Rosen Zhelyazkov and tour an ammunition factory. The commission president was on a tour of the EU’s frontline states to discuss efforts to improve the bloc’s defence readiness in response to Russia’s war against Ukraine.

“[Russian president Vladimir] Putin has not changed, and he will not change,” von der Leyen told reporters while on the ground in Bulgaria on Sunday. “He is a predator. He can only be kept in check through strong deterrence.”

Bulgaria has been one of the most important European suppliers of military equipment to Ukraine, initially of legacy Soviet-era weaponry in the opening months of the war, and now of artillery and other products produced by the country’s large defence industry.

Von der Leyen left Plovdiv on the same plane without incident after the visit.

Nvidia says two mystery customers accounted for 39% of Q2 revenue

Nearly 40% of Nvidia’s second quarter revenue came from just two customers, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

On Wednesday, the chipmaker reported record revenue of $46.7 billion during the quarter that ended on July 27 — a 56% year-over-year increase largely driven by the AI data center boom. However, subsequent reporting highlighted how much of that growth seems to be coming from just a handful of customers.

Specifically, Nvidia said that a single customer represented 23% of total Q2 revenue, while sales to another customer represented 16% of Q2 revenue. The filing does not identify either of these customers, only referring to them as “Customer A” and “Customer B.”

During the first half of the fiscal year, Nvidia says Customer A and Customer B accounted for 20% and 15% of total revenue, respectively. Four other customers accounted for 14%, 11%, another 11%, and 10% of Q2 revenue, the company says.

In its filing, the company says these are all “direct” customers — such as original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), system integrators, or distributors — who purchase their chips directly from Nvidia. Indirect customers, such as cloud service providers and consumer internet companies, purchase Nvidia chips from these direct customers.

In other words, it sounds unlikely that a big cloud provider like Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon, or Google might secretly be Customer A or Customer B — though those companies may be indirectly responsible for that massive spending.

In fact, Nvidia’s Chief Financial Officer Nicole Kress said that “large cloud service providers” accounted for 50% of Nvidia’s data center revenue, which in turn represented 88% of the company’s total revenue, according to CNBC.

What does this mean for Nvidia’s future prospects? Gimme Credit analyst Dave Novosel told Fortune that while “concentration of revenue among such a small group of customers does present a significant risk,” the good news is that “these customers have bountiful cash on hand, generate massive amounts of free cash flow, and are expected to spend lavishly on data centers over the next couple of years.”

A homicide investigation has rocked the final days of Burning Man after a man was found dead “lying in a pool of blood” Saturday night at the Nevada desert festival, according to the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office. According to the New York Times, the grim discovery occurred around 9:14 p.m. just as the festival’s iconic wooden “Man” effigy began its traditional burn.

The victim, described as a white adult male whose identity remains unknown, was found by a festival participant who flagged down a deputy. Sheriff Jerry Allen confirmed that deputies, Bureau of Land Management rangers, and local rangers immediately secured a perimeter while the Washoe County Sheriff’s Office forensic team collected evidence.

The murder comes as Burning Man long ago evolved from a countercultural gathering into a networking hub for Silicon Valley’s tech elite. Tesla CEO Elon Musk once declared that “Burning Man is Silicon Valley,” and Mark Zuckerberg famously helicoptered in to serve grilled cheese sandwiches. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos has also made the desert pilgrimage.

But perhaps no tech leaders have deeper ties to the festival than Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who have been devoted attendees for years. Their connection reportedly runs so deep that long before Google Doodles became known for celebrating holidays, the very first Google Doodle was launched on August 30, 1998 to tell users that Page and Brin were out of office at Burning Man.

This homicide investigation marks the latest in a series of bizarre incidents at the festival over its 38-year history. In 2017, a man died after throwing himself into the burning effigy, while deaths from motorcycle crashes and vehicle accidents have occurred since the 1990s. In another strange twist, last week, a baby named Aurora was born at the festival to parents who had no idea they were expecting.

The investigation faces unique challenges as Sheriff Allen noted it’s “a complicated investigation of a crime in a city which will be gone by the middle of the week.” With the festival scheduled to end Monday and the traditional exodus of 70,000 attendees beginning, authorities may face pressure to extend the timeline or restrict departures to preserve the crime scene and conduct interviews.

“Although this act appears to be a singular crime, all participants should always be vigilant of their surroundings and acquaintances,” the sheriff’s office warned, as the temporary desert metropolis prepares for its annual dismantling.

Throngs of wealthy newcomers have arrived in Milan including Nassef Sawiris, Egypt’s richest man, Richard Gnodde, vice-chair of Goldman Sachs and Yoël Zaoui, co-founder of advisory boutique Zaoui & Co. Rolly van Rappard, co-founder of private equity group CVC Capital Partners, is weighing a move. 

They are just the tip of the iceberg. Milan’s charm and a friendly tax regime have lured several thousand foreigners to Italy’s financial centre, write Harriet Agnew, Josh Spero, Ortenca Aliaj and Silvia Sciorilli Borrelli. 

New foreign residents — or a returning Italian who has lived abroad for at least nine years — can pay a flat tax of €200,000 a year on any foreign income and assets for up to 15 years and be fully exempt from inheritance tax on foreign assets during that period. What’s more, over 100,000 people have benefited from a scheme for those arriving from overseas that gives a 50 per cent reduction on taxable Italian income, with most moving to Milan.

Italy’s fiscal sweeteners come as the UK has abolished its 226-year-old rules for non-domiciled residents, exposing their overseas assets to a 40 per cent inheritance tax and their foreign income and gains to the wider British regime. Tax on carried interest — private equity managers’ profits on successful deals — has in effect also risen to 34 per cent in the UK, while Italy has a flat rate of 26 per cent.

Asset managers are moving too. As part of a wider European expansion, alternatives firms including CVC, Preservation Capital and Ares have been opening and expanding offices in Milan in recent years, joined by hedge funds, including Capstone Investment Advisors and Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management.

But it’s not all good news. The influx of wealthy foreigners has caused friction with locals as property and rental prices have soared, while a corruption probe is under way over some redevelopment in the city’s most exclusive neighbourhood.

Shock-and-awe ‘victory day’ military parade this week seeks to recast second world war narrative

Xi Jinping has called on Russia, India and other countries in the region to join China in leveraging their economic influence to challenge the west at a time of rising geopolitical and trade tensions.

The Chinese president, hosting a regional security forum, told more than 20 leaders that with the world undergoing “turbulence and change”, they needed to uphold an “orderly multipolar world”.

This included championing free trade and “a more just and reasonable global governance system”, in a clear challenge to the current US-led system.

“We should expand the scope of co-operation, make the most of each country’s unique strengths, and shoulder together the shared responsibility of promoting regional peace, stability and prosperity,” Xi told world leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday.

Beijing is using the two-day meeting in Tianjin, northern China, as a chance to showcase itself as a pillar of global governance in contrast to the administration of US President Donald Trump, whose tariffs have hit friends and foes alike in the region.

Xi has held multiple bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the summit, including with Modi, and will meet Putin on Tuesday.

The Chinese leader outlined plans loans and grants and reiterated China’s calls for a new regional development bank.

The meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization security group coincides with the 80th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in the second world war, which China will mark on Wednesday, as Beijing seeks to recast history with itself in the role of guardian of the postwar international order.

Putin, North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and a score of leaders including those of Iran, Myanmar and Pakistan will also attend a lavish parade where China will show off military hardware.

While the weaponry and the presence of countries considered pariahs in the west will draw attention and concern, Beijing’s underlying goal is more subtle, analysts said.

Xi wants to amplify China’s role in the second world war and the ensuing peace, when the new global order was established under the auspices of the UN. He also wants to use the anniversary to reinforce China’s claims of sovereignty over Taiwan, and its standing among developing countries as an alternative leader to the US.

As Trump shakes up the multilateral system, Beijing sees an opportunity to reinterpret the international order and advance its ambition of a multi-polar world, analysts said.

The victory day anniversary is a vehicle for that narrative, with Xi on Monday Xi calling on countries to promote the “correct” perspective of the second world war.

“It’s a good global context for China to use this moment to say: ‘Hey, you know, here we are, the originator of multilateralism — now we’re taking multilateralism in a new inclusive direction’,” said David Bandurski, director of the China Media Project and an expert on Chinese propaganda.

For Beijing, an important first step is to reshape common narratives about China’s role in the Allied victory in the second world war and play down the US contribution, analysts said. China dates its “war of resistance against Japanese aggression” to 1931 — a decade before the US entered the conflict.

“China and the Soviet Union were the principal theatres of that war in Asia and Europe respectively,” Xi wrote ahead of a visit in May to Moscow, where he watched Russia’s Victory Day parade alongside Putin, who he has called his “old friend”. 

“The two countries served as the mainstay of resistance against Japanese militarism and German Nazism, making pivotal contributions to the victory of the World Anti-Fascist War,” Xi said.

For Beijing, part of its effort to shift the US-led “rules-based international order” is aimed at reinforcing its claims over Taiwan.

In Xi’s last second world war anniversary speech in 2015, he did not mention Taiwan. Communist party propaganda that year acknowledged the role of China’s wartime Kuomintang nationalist government.

That was due to improving relations at the time between Beijing and a KMT-led government in Taiwan, where the nationalists fled in 1949 after losing a civil war with the Communists. The nationalists had taken the main role in fighting Japan, and their government led the postwar negotiations.

This year, the Communist party is pushing hard on the narrative that they were the central pillar in the war of resistance against Japan

Since 2015, China has also become more aggressive towards Taiwan, holding extensive military exercises, particularly after last year’s election of Democratic Progressive party President Lai Ching-te, whom Beijing considers a dangerous separatist.

Beijing roots its claims over Taiwan in two Allied wartime arrangements — the Cairo and Potsdam declarations — that called for Taiwan to be returned from Japan to China after the conflict.

This year, it linked these pacts for the first time to the UN’s 1971 “derecognition” of Taiwan’s then-KMT government to support Beijing’s sovereignty claim over the island, said Chang Wu-Ueh, director of the Center for Cross-Strait Relations at Taiwan’s Tamkang University.

“China’s sovereignty claims . . . are profoundly connected to its support for the UN as the core organization of postwar global governance,” Kainan Gao and Margaret Pearson wrote in a paper for the Brookings Institution.

Such narratives are disputed in the west. The US, by contrast, cites the 1951 Treaty of San Francisco — in which the Allies formally ended the war with Japan — which left open the question of to whom Tokyo should cede control of Taiwan. Beijing rejects this treaty.

And while experts acknowledge China’s immense sacrifices, “you have to acknowledge that in the end, the Pacific war between the US and Japan is the one that’s decisive in terms of ending the war”, said China historian Rana Mitter. The Soviet Union also largely sat on the sidelines due to a non-aggression pact with Japan.

For many in the west, Wednesday’s victory day parade itself — and the attendance of leaders such as Putin amid Russia’s full-scale war in Ukraine — will undercut Beijing’s message as champion of stability and multilateralism.

“Beijing’s attempts to take advantage of Trumpian chaos to shore up its international image has its limits,” said Amanda Hsiao, director for China at consultancy Eurasia Group.

“In this case, it will be undercut by a massive display of military hard power and its close ties and narrative alignment with Moscow.”

Ultimately, however, the parade and Xi’s efforts to change the narrative of the war are mainly aimed at a domestic audience and partners in the global south, not the US and its allies. 

“This is a good way to show the party domestically, internally, that Xi Jinping and the current leadership of the politburo standing committee is strong and globally respected,” said Bandurski.