TheChek News Flow

Billionaire investor discloses nearly 20% stake in Hertz, lays out path to greater profitability

Billionaire hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman disclosed a nearly 20% stake in rental-car company Hertz HTZ 44.31%increase; green up pointing triangle on Thursday as he laid out his bullish reasoning behind the bet.

In a social-media post on X, Ackman said the current tariff environment helps Hertz, which he described as part of an oligopoly where Enterprise, Avis and Hertz control nearly 95% of the U.S. market.

Driving his rationale: “Improving industry structure and more rational competitive behavior,” and fixing a recent misstep when Hertz acquired a large fleet of electric vehicles, Ackman wrote.

He also mused about a potential partnership with Uber UBER 2.98%increase; green up pointing triangle, and said that he would call Dara Khosrowshahi, the ride-hailing giant’s chief executive.

Hertz did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Khosrowshahi responded on social media, “Hertz has been a great partner of ours @Uber—excited to brainstorm on how we can expand on our relationship!”

“We began accumulating shares in @Hertz late last year, and as of today, we have a 19.8% stake in the company comprised of outright share ownership and total return swaps,” Ackman said in his post.

Auto tariffs are likely to cause used car prices to rise, and Hertz owns a fleet of over 500,000 vehicles valued at approximately $12 billion, Ackman tweeted. A 10% increase in used car prices would equate to a $1.2 billion gain on its auto assets, equivalent to approximately half of the company’s current market capitalization.

Ackman, who leads Pershing Square Capital Management, cited an operational turnaround being led by Hertz’s new management team as giving him confidence in the business, adding that he believes the leveraged capital structure will help generate an attractive return.

Hertz shares closed up 44.31% at $8.24 Thursday. Over the past two days, Hertz is up 125.75%.

Pershing Square’s investment strategy involves holding a concentrated portfolio of well-known stocks that it believes are undervalued. Its largest positions include stakes in Universal Music Group, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Uber Technologies and Restaurant Brands International, the parent company of Burger King. Earlier in his career, Ackman made a name for himself in waging proxy fights and short selling, but Pershing Square has moved away from that in recent years.

His main fund, Pershing Square Holdings, has generated a compound annual return of about 12.7% since its inception in 2012, slightly underperforming the S&P 500 over that span. It is down 5.5% this year through April 15.

Trade representative plans to charge ships for each voyage, not for each U.S. port call, following industry pushback

The U.S. is moving forward with a plan to charge fees on Chinese ships calling at American ports, part of the Trump administration’s effort to counter China’s dominance in ocean shipping and revive the domestic maritime industry.

The U.S. Trade Representative’s office on Thursday released the plan to charge steep fees on Chinese-owned and operated ships, and lower fees on Chinese-built vessels operated by non-Chinese carriers.

Ships will be charged for each voyage to the U.S. and not for each call at a U.S. port, a step back from an earlier proposal that had drawn sharp criticism from a raft of industries that warned of devastating costs to consumers and businesses. The USTR on Thursday said the fees will only be imposed on any given ship up to five times a year.

Starting in six months, Chinese owners and operators will be charged $50 a net ton on each U.S. voyage. This fee will increase by $30 a net ton each year for the next three years. Non-Chinese operators of Chinese-built ships in six months will be charged based on net tonnage or by container, starting at $18 a net ton or $120 a container. This will increase by $5 a net ton, or the proportional amount for each container, in each of the next three years.

The USTR’s fee plan comes about a week after President Trump signed an executive order directing national security adviser Mike Waltz and the heads of various federal agencies to draw up plans to resurrect domestic shipbuilding and the maritime workforce.

As a member of Congress last year, Waltz co-sponsored bipartisan legislation—the Shipbuilding and Harbor Infrastructure for Prosperity and Security for America Act—to boost domestic shipbuilding and expand the U.S.-flagged commercial fleet.

The USTR’s port fee plan was created in response to a U.S. probe that began under President Joe Biden in March 2024. The USTR determined in January that China was involved in unfair trade practices in the maritime, logistics and shipbuilding sectors.

China churns out more vessels than any other country. Its shipyards account for nearly 29% of containerships on the water and 70% of containerships on order, when measured by capacity, according to data firm Linerlytica. The nation also dominates construction of shipping containers and ship-to-shore cranes.

The trade representative decided to not impose a fee based on a company’s prospective orders of Chinese vessels, following industry pushback. The USTR said fees and restrictions on any given vessel will be suspended for up to three years once carriers can show proof of an order of a U.S.-built vessel.

The new fees would directly hit Chinese shipping and logistics behemoth Cosco, the world’s biggest shipping company in terms of capacity. The fees would also affect large non-Chinese companies such as Denmark’s A.P. Moller-Maersk and Switzerland-based Mediterranean Shipping, which have purchased scores of vessels from China’s busy shipyards.

Cosco, Maersk and MSC didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The USTR said it would charge foreign-built car-carrier vessels based on their capacity, starting at $150 per car equivalent unit beginning in six months, to encourage U.S.-built car carrier vessels.

USTR won’t charge fees on bulk commodity exports on ships that arrive in the U.S. empty, nor on voyages in the Great Lakes, Caribbean and between U.S. territories.

The USTR also said in three years it would impose restrictions on transporting liquefied natural gas via foreign vessels and will increase the restrictions incrementally over the following 22 years to encourage the building of LNG vessels in the U.S.

The U.S. tech giant dropped to fifth place with a 13.7% market share

Apple AAPL 1.39%increase; green up pointing triangle lost its top spot in China’s smartphone market, dethroned by local rival Xiaomi as Beijing’s consumption-boosting subsidies help buoy demand for cheaper products.

The U.S. tech giant’s share of China’s highly lucrative phone market shrank to 13.7% during the first quarter from 15.6% a year earlier, dropping Apple to fifth place in the ranking, according to preliminary data from research firm International Data Corporation.

Apple has been facing increasing competition in China in recent years. Despite claiming the top spot in the final quarter of 2024 with a marginal lead, the iPhone maker lost out to local rivals vivo and Huawei on annual shipments that year.

In the first three months of 2025, Apple’s iPhone shipments in China dropped 9% to 9.8 million units, IDC said Thursday. That said, it was the only non-Chinese brand to make it to the top 5, the data showed.

Chinese tech giant Xiaomi, whose products range from smartphones and home appliances to electric vehicles, usurped Apple to take the lead during the first quarter, with shipments up nearly 40% on the year.

Huawei, which like Xiaomi also makes smartphones and is involved in EVs, took second place in IDC’s ranking while consumer electronics firm OPPO came third. The two Chinese companies shipped 12.9 million and 11.2 million units during the first quarter, respectively.

Xiaomi’s return to the top spot after nearly a decade was largely due to “government subsidies that resonated with its value-conscious customer base,” said Will Wong, senior research manager for Client Devices at IDC Asia/Pacific.

China’s continued expansion of subsidies to get consumers spending again has been a boon for less-expensive brands.

In January, policymakers widened consumer subsidies to include smartphones, tablets and smartwatches. The price of products eligible for the subsidy is capped at 6,000 yuan, equivalent to $821.92, meaning that consumers can’t use the benefit to buy products with bigger price tags.

Citi analysts reckon that the handset subsidy could spur some Chinese consumers to replace their phones with products that cost less than 3,000 yuan, a segment that makes up 75% of the country’s smartphone user base.

Overall, the subsidies’ effect on consumer demand seems to be subdued so far, IDC said, noting that though the Chinese smartphone market’s first-quarter growth was robust it missed expectations.

Headwinds from the trade conflict between Beijing and Washington could dampen demand in the next quarters, as tit-for-tat tariffs raise business costs and hurt consumer sentiment.

“Looking ahead, the market is expected to face challenges as the U.S.-China trade tensions may lead to cost increases and tighter consumer budgets,” said Arthur Guo, senior research analyst for IDC China.

Non-doms quit London private members’ clubs to avoid UK tax links

Lawyers advise wealthy clients that HMRC could use membership as evidence of strong ties to Britain

Non-doms who have left the UK are quitting their exclusive private members’ clubs to prevent HM Revenue & Customs thinking they are still resident, and therefore have to pay tax.

Lawyers have been advising wealthy clients that the tax authority can use membership of a club such as Annabel’s, Soho House or 5 Hertford Street as evidence they still have strong ties to the UK. Annabel’s has an annual membership fee of £3,750 on top of a £1,850 joining fee.

Many wealthy individuals, such as steel billionaire Lakshmi Mittal, have either left the UK or are planning to because of the abolition of the non-dom regime. This allowed British residents who declared their permanent home as being overseas to avoid paying UK tax on foreign income and gains.

A former non-dom who left the country because of the regime’s abolition said she had quit the Arts Club and 5 Hertford Street, both in London’s Mayfair, on her lawyer’s advice. “They don’t even like you to be a member of a gym, so anything that shows commitment to something [in the UK], even if it’s not expensive, is taken . . . as evidence of your desire to actually be here.” She is now dividing her time mainly between Greece and Switzerland.

Philip Palumbo, managing director of The Walbrook Club in the City of London, said some of his non-dom members had quit when they had left the country: “They have cited membership as evidence of ties to this country, and so they’ve had to resign from us.”

Palumbo added that he thought “certain clubs in the West End will struggle with the exodus of non-doms” because of their internationally mobile clientele.

Other private members’ clubs have begun to think about how they can stop non-doms from quitting entirely. Because in some cases HMRC imposes a limit of 90 days a year on how long someone can spend in the UK before they are considered tax-resident, one club has raised the prospect of offering short-term memberships for specific durations including 90 days, according to a person close to the discussions.

Another club has seen a surge in interest among members looking to switch from UK to overseas memberships, a person familiar with the situation said.

In her October Budget, chancellor Rachel Reeves confirmed the abolition of the non-dom regime as of April 6, proposed by her predecessor Jeremy Hunt. Those who have decided to stay will see their worldwide assets potentially subjected to UK inheritance tax at 40 per cent.

Guidance from HMRC for its Statutory Residence Test, which aims to determine whether a person is resident in Britain and thus liable for UK taxes, lists a number of factors to be taken into account. These include a spouse or children in the UK, local utility bills and “membership of clubs, for example, sports, health or social clubs”.

Camilla Wallace, senior partner at law firm Wedlake Bell, confirmed that she had advised clients to relinquish club memberships when leaving the UK.

Wallace also queried what it would mean, for UK tax purposes, if a former non-dom belonged to an international club that offered a “reciprocal” club membership in London.

Number of UK consumers who stream sports illegally has gone ‘through the roof’, police say

Enforcement resources directed at gangs at the top rather than consumers who flout law

The number of people who stream sports or other channels illegally in the UK has gone “through the roof” — straining already-stretched police forces in their efforts to prosecute consumers who flout the law, the head of Britain’s intellectual property crime unit has said.

Emma Warbey, detective chief inspector and head of the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) at the City of London Police, admitted individuals were largely able to use “broken” illegal fire sticks without risk of arrest by her team as officers targeted organised crime groups and resellers at the head of such schemes.

The use of internet TV media boxes or “sticks” that can be used to illegally stream content had become increasingly prevalent, she said — something that broadcasters have warned devalues the sports rights market.

These boxes can be preloaded with software that can stream illegal sports and channels from around the world.

Warbey said it would be wrong to conclude that using illegal streams to watch sports and other paid TV content was a risk-free way of watching media, pointing to fraud and funding for organised crime gangs.

She said her team had focused efforts on tackling “resellers and the people at the top of the tree” given “it’s really hard to stop people doing it”.

She added: “We always follow the money and go for the bigger organised crime groups and the bigger organised crime networks.”

Broadcasters and law enforcement officers have raised concerns that the increase in use of illegal streaming devices has helped normalise piracy for many sports fans in the UK and parts of Europe.

The rise of pirated sports risks undermining the value of exclusive football and other sports around the UK and Europe, they warn, with concerns that use of illegal streams was seen as a victimless crime.

Warbey said police had discovered clear links between pirated sports with money laundering and fraud, which should make users more careful.

“Those criminals are using that money, your hard-earned money, for lots of different things, usually drugs, certainly forced labour, people trafficking, huge amounts of other criminality that you’re feeding into so it isn’t a victimless crime.”

The police used “cease and desist” letters initially with the lower-level sellers of illegal TV services, Warbey said. “We are basically saying, ‘We know what you’re doing, this is the law that you’re breaking, and if you carry on, we will come and arrest you.’”

Such letters can be “very effective . . . because it is so prevalent in the UK. If you were a 22-year-old doing it from your bedroom and the police turned up, that’s a huge impact. We can’t arrest everybody in the UK that’s doing it. So we’re trying to look at other tactics.”

Warbey also warned that many consumers would also not realise they were giving their personal details to fraudsters and organised crime groups, raising the risk of fraud.

She said the cost of living crisis had added to the already rising cases of people using illegal but cheaper means to watch sports.

Last month, Sky criticised Amazon for not doing more to tackle the use of its Fire Sticks in streaming pirated content. It estimates that Amazon sticks account for about half the illegal streaming of Premier League football in the UK alone, costing the industry “hundreds of millions of dollars”.

Amazon said it had prohibited the sale of illicit streaming devices in its marketplace as well as on apps that infringed the rights of third parties. It added its Fire TV service “included on-device warnings informing customers of the risks associated with installing or using apps from unknown sources”.

The City of London police oversees efforts to tackle piracy as the lead on fraud, although Warbey’s team is funded by the Intellectual Property Office.

Companies such as Sky can also carry out private prosecutions and can work with other police forces around the country. Sky won a High Court order that forces internet service providers to block piracy services from being able to illegally stream its football games and TV shows. 

Criminal investigations and court cases can take months, meaning that resources need to be allocated to the larger criminal gangs. Last year, Warbey’s team was part of an international police operation that shut down one of the world’s largest illegal online streaming services, used by about 22mn people globally. One of her longest-running cases is going to court in October. 

Such cases highlighted the need to go for the criminals “at the top of the tree, [who] will have tens of thousands of resellers all across the country that are selling it down”, she said.

She said it was not just pirated sports; criminals also sell access to any TV shows and channels that are either not available or need to be paid for in the UK. This also works the other way, with gangs selling British-only streams such as iPlayer in Europe.