G-III Brings War of Words to PVH in Licensing Lawsuit
A dispute over extensions to Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger suit licenses reveals simmering tensions in the relationship.
The marriage of the PVH Corp.’s brand power and G-III Apparel Group’s production prowess has been crumbling since 2022, when PVH moved to take back its Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein licenses over five years.
Now the breakup has become not just litigious, but bitter.
G-III hit PVH with a $250 million breach of contract lawsuit last month after it was denied three-year extensions on its women’s suit licenses for both brands. But because the full complaint was under seal, the legal paperwork only hinted at the scope of the dispute.
Now that a redacted version of the lawsuit has been filed with New York State Court, years of frustration were given an opportunity to boil over in public.
G-III not only argues that there was no basis to deny the license extensions, but takes aim at PVH chief executive officer Stefan Larsson’s plans to remake the company and highlights the attendant impact on the licensed businesses. The suit separately alleges a “sustained and deliberate campaign of unlawful misconduct.”
“We filed this legal action to protect and uphold our contractual rights, as we believe that PVH is taking steps that do not align with our agreements,” a G-III spokesperson said. “We have had a successful partnership for more than two decades and see their recent actions as an unreasonable attempt to jeopardize our business.”
Regarding the lawsuit, a PVH spokesperson said: “G-III’s claims are baseless. We are responding via the legal process and look forward to addressing these matters in court. Through our continued execution of the PVH+ Plan, we are building our brands for the long term. Our strong, go-forward licensing partnerships play an important role in helping us drive sustainable, brand-accretive growth and unlock the power of our iconic brands.”
PVH generated $300 million in earnings before interest and taxes from its overall licensing business last year — and the G-III license takeback impacts 20 percent of PVH’s expected licensing revenues for 2025.
While the suit hints at the state of the broader relationship between PVH and G-III, it directly focuses in on a narrower slice of the business. It also offers just one side of the story.
But it’s juicy in a fashion insider kind of way.
Generally, the suit bemoans the loss of the partnership that was established with former PVH CEO Manny Chirico and cumulatively produced $16 billion in North American wholesale sales.
“After Mr. Chirico retired following a long and successful run as PVH’s CEO, a new management team took the reins at PVH in 2021. Relations between defendants and G-III have worsened ever since, as defendants have made a series of strategic and entirely avoidable blunders,” the suit claimed. “In April 2022, PVH launched a new strategy for the Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger brands, called the PVH+ Plan. When introducing the plan to investors, PVH stated that ‘our licensed partners play a vital role in allowing us to bring the full lifestyle of Calvin Klein to our consumers…we are working closely with our licensing partners to bring them along on our journey.’”
Turns out, the journey wasn’t as long for G-III as it expected and PVH said later that year that it would be repatriating its G-III licenses over five years.
Behind the scenes, even the communication strategy to reveal the change caused friction.
According to the suit, the PVH news release on the license amendments was different than the drafts that were shared with G-III and touted the company’s plan to “transition…core product categories back to PVH.” The release, along with an interview Larsson gave to WWD and subsequent trade articles, “shocked the market — in particular department stores and other retailers that had counted on G-III as a long-term partner in regard to Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger products,” the suit alleged.
Despite the obvious tension at the start, both companies appeared to be going their own way.
Morris Goldfarb, who’s been CEO of G-III for more than 50 years, put all of his long experience in to fill the hole that would be left when PVH ultimately walked away with about half of his business. G-III relaunched its Donna Karan brand, looked to rev up the Karl Lagerfeld subsidiary, signed a 25-year license for Halston, inked a deal with Champion and more.
Meanwhile, Larsson, who before PVH worked at H&M, Old Navy and Ralph Lauren Corp., sharpened his strategic focus on Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein. His PVH+ Plan looked to pump up the brands with high profile media moments, like Calvin Klein’s campaign with Bad Bunny featuring the brand’s new Icon Cotton Stretch underwear with an “infinity waistband” that has no stitching.
The idea is to get people talking by putting a white-hot spotlight on those hero products and then presenting a very focused brand, an effort that was meant to be helped along by taking direct control over the U.S. wholesale business G-III previously managed. When PVH has lined everything up with its new approach — like with Bad Bunny — the results are good. But at least some analysts are getting antsy and are keen to see those kinds of PVH+ gains hit more of the company’s overall business.
G-III’s suit zeros in on a relatively nuanced bit of contractual back and forth.
When the company put in its bid to renew the suit licenses, PVH replied that both businesses had seen a “negative compound annual growth rate (i.e., a decline)” that would have been even worse if PVH had not allowed G-III to sell more goods through off-price than initially allowed under the contract.
But the suit argues that: “to the extent that sales of these apparel lines have been declining, the declines are a direct — and frankly foreseeable and preventable — consequence of defendants’ own ill-considered and poorly executed strategies and actions — issues that, by the way, G-III has consistently sought to bring to PVH’s attention, but to no avail — as well as macro trends in the apparel industry, none of which are, needless to say, under G-III’s control.”
G-III also claimed that both the Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger suit businesses hit their “bargained-for performance.”
“Defendants are unreasonably seeking to impose a new and extracontractual condition on G-III’s right to extend the licenses, over and above the contractually agreed-upon performance requirements,” the suit said. “The real reason for defendants’ unreasonable refusal to approve an extension of the licenses is that, under the stewardship of its new management team, PVH has been on a punitive and meritless campaign against G-III, attempting at every turn to harm G-III’s business and reputation and to blame G-III for the failures of defendants’ own ill-advised strategies. This latest maneuver is just more of the same.”
The suit also contended that, “in another major and head-scratching blow to G-III and its department store clients, PVH promoted a new strategy for Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger that sought to focus sales of the brands in a more limited number of stores, including by reducing door counts by more than 90 percent — from 450 to only 25 ‘doors’ — at one retailer, closing all ‘doors’ at another retailer, and asking G-III to reduce the number of Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger skus. Further, PVH did not and does not have a successful track record on women’s wholesale, so the retail market was nervous about how PVH would be able to execute in the women’s wholesale space.”
PVH has been looking to build back its North American wholesale business methodically so that it meshes with its broader, global vision for Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger.
Instead of selling to Meta, AI chip startup FuriosaAI signed a huge customer
South Korean AI chip startup FuriosaAI announced a partnership on Tuesday to supply its AI chip, RNGD, to enterprises using LG AI Research‘s recently unveiled EXAONE platform.
RNGD is optimized for running large language models (LLMs) and just last week, the Korean tech giant LG unveiled its next-generation hybrid AI model EXAONE 4.0. The collaboration targets key sectors, including electronics, finance, telecommunications, and biotechnology, for a range of diverse applications.
This news comes roughly three months after FuriosaAI declined Meta’s $800 million acquisition offer, opting to remain independent.
The deal fell through due to disagreements over post-acquisition business strategy and organizational structure, rather than price issues, according to local media outlets. Meta’s interest in acquiring AI chipmakers like FuriosaAI reflects its broader strategy to reduce its reliance on third-party suppliers, such as Nvidia.
When asked why the deal with Meta fell through, CEO of FuriosaAI June Paik told TechCrunch: “We want to continue our mission, and I think it’s an exciting opportunity at the same time. I believe it’s a very impactful contribution, both personally and for the company, to make AI computing more sustainable.”
With M&A (at least from Meta) off the table, Paik declined to specify if the startup is now in pursuit of fresh funding.
However, Paik says this new partnership will lead to business possibilities far beyond South Korea.
“LG AI’s EXAONE is regarded as the leading sovereign AI model in South Korea. It won’t be used just within LG. It will be one of the main AI models used in the Korean AI ecosystem. We expect there will be many demands for this EXAONE, as well as for our chip solutions in South Korea, but not only in Korea. The LG team is also partnering with and doing business with global customers. So, we also expect this to be used by those customers, including global customers,” Paik said.
LG AI’s decision to adopt Furiosa’s AI chip and accelerator is notable for another reason: it’s one of the few public endorsements of a rival to Nvidia by a major enterprise, Paik said. One major reason for the win is that the startup’s hardware costs less.
“We had to prove that our solution not only delivers strong performance but also lowers total cost of ownership,” Paik said.
FuriosaAI claims that its RNGD accelerator outperformed competitive GPUs with LG AI Research’s EXAONE models, delivering 2.25 times better inference performance. Paik also says that LG found the FuriosaAI hardware was more energy efficiency.
Furiosa’s chip is not a general GPU but was built exclusively for AI. “We can support a wide variety of AI models efficiently. But unlike GPUs, which are still fundamentally general-purpose processors, our architecture is natively built for AI computing. We do not develop our chip for rendering or mining,” Paik said.
The Seoul-based startup, which also operates an office in Santa Clara, has a global team of just 15 employees.
Morgan Stanley warns against ‘misguided’ idea of Apple acquiring an AI search engine
Apple Intelligence could be about to launch in China despite US government fears | AI logo on Apple devices
There’s been no shortage of rumors about Apple’s supposed intentions of acquiring an AI search company, such as Perplexity, to help it catch up in the AI race. And while many seem to agree that this would be at least a partial solution to Apple’s problems, Morgan Stanley isn’t that convinced.
In an investor note published today (via AppleInsider), Morgan Stanley analyst Erik Woodring states that it is “misguided” to think that Apple should acquire an AI search engine, as it is not the company’s intention to compete in the search market.
The note acknowledges Apple’s struggles in this field, and states that while the September quarter will also not bring many Apple Intelligence-related updates, Apple’s ability to capitalize on AI-driven features remains a long-term play.
A positive outlook on the upcoming fiscal Q3 report
Apple is set to release its fiscal Q3 2025 earnings results on July 31. Morgan Stanley expects them to show solid performance across hardware and services.
The firm has raised its revenue forecast for the quarter to $90.7 billion, up 5.8% year-over-year, citing stronger-than-expected iPhone shipments, higher average selling prices, and continued strength in iPad and Mac sales.
Services are also expected to be a highlight, despite investor concerns from the recent App Store injunction, added to Apple’s decision not to issue guidance during its last earnings call. Morgan Stanley sees no signs of a slowdown, and now projects Services revenue will grow 11.6% year-over-year.
In the note, Woodring maintains Apple’s Overweight rating, meaning he believes the stock can still outperform the broader market. He set a $235 price target, above the recent price targets set by HSBC ($220), and JPMorgan ($230).
iOS 27 to focus on new features for upcoming iPhone Fold
Act surprised: Apple is soon expected to formally kick off development of iOS 27. This year, Apple will have a big task: updating the iOS experience in preparation for its most radical new iPhone yet.
Details are unclear, but iOS 27 will unsurprisingly focus heavily on optimizing software for Apple’s first foldable iPhone. This will include new features specifically for the iPhone Fold as well as ensuring that iOS as we know it today is optimized for the new form factor.
In the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, Mark Gurman writes:
In fairness to Apple, its foldable phone won’t be a carbon copy. As I reported months ago, the company is focused on addressing a few of the foldable category’s longstanding weaknesses. The company aims to make the inner display crease less visible and dramatically improve the hinge mechanism. And as part of the development of iOS 27 — which formally kicks off soon — Apple will prioritize software features tailored specifically to this new form factor.
According to Bloomberg, Ming-Chi Kuo, and other sources, Apple will release its first foldable phone next year. The device will reportedly offer a number of industry-first features, including a crease-free display and an innovative liquid metal hinge.
The foldable iPhone is said to pack an approximately 7.8-inch inner display and a 5.5-inch outer display. This means the iPhone would be similar to an iPad mini screen when unfolded. According to Ming-Chi Kuo, the device will lack support for Face ID and instead offer Touch ID as a form of biometric authentication.
That high-end design will also come with a high-end price point. Most rumors say the iPhone Fold will cost at least $2,000, making it the most expensive iPhone Apple has ever released by a wide margin.
The Global Economy Is Powering Through a Historic Increase in Tariffs
Trade, production, growth and other global economic vitals are proving resilient almost four months after President Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs
- The global economy shows resilience despite tariff increases.
- Businesses are hedging by rerouting goods and adjusting supply chains, while governments support confidence through spending.
- Despite tariff concerns, trade volumes and stock markets are up, with some businesses planning further U.S. expansion.
The global economy is sailing through this year’s historic increase in tariffs, displaying an unexpected trait: resilience.
Faced with extreme uncertainty, businesses and households have surprised economists with their ability to hedge, finding a short-term path through as they await clarity on where tariffs will end up.
Global producers brought forward purchases and rerouted goods destined for the U.S. through third-party countries that are subject to lower tariffs. For the most part, households and businesses have continued to spend and invest despite the uncertainty, analysts say.
The world economy grew at a 2.4% annual rate in the first half of this year, around its longer-term trend, according to JPMorgan.
Trade volumes are buoyant, stock markets on both sides of the Atlantic have rebounded to record highs and growth forecasts from Europe to Asia are being raised.
Investment, manufacturing employment, spending and overall activity all held up globally, according to Goldman Sachs.
“What people have gotten wrong is the chaotic behavior [of trade policy] and the hedging that has introduced,” said Marcus Noland, executive vice president at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C.
In part, businesses are benefiting from reflexes learned and changes made during the Covid-19 pandemic, such as bulletproofing their supply chains, which compressed margins at the time, but is now paying off. Governments from the U.S. to Germany are also spending lavishly, helping to support confidence.
Some businesses may be building up inventory now in the expectation that tariffs will be higher in the future, said Angel Talavera, an economist at Oxford Economics.
“It seems that the uncertainty is weighing less on economic activity than we thought,” Isabel Schnabel, who sits on the European Central Bank’s six-member executive board, said in an interview published in recent days on the central bank’s website.
The political backlash against globalization that accelerated roughly 10 years ago has also long persuaded many international businesses to rely more on local production to serve their main export markets. Many say the tariffs have underlined the importance of such plans.
EBM Papst, a German manufacturer of fans with around €2.5 billion of annual revenue, equivalent to around $2.9 billion, is planning to build a third factory in the U.S. and is considering whether that factory should have an extension, said Chief Executive Officer Klaus Geissdoerfer. The company expects double-digit revenue growth in the U.S. for years to come, partly due to the construction of data centers supporting the artificial-intelligence boom.
Some American customers have asked the company to localize more production in the U.S. to replace suppliers from Asia who are facing higher U.S. tariffs, Geissdoerfer said. “That would help us to grow 20-30% on top in the U.S.,” he said.
World merchandise trade volumes beat expectations in the first three months of this year, rising by 5.3% from a year earlier, powered by a surge in imports to North America, the World Trade Organization said in a recent report. The WTO increased its forecast for trade in goods this year to 0.1% growth, having previously forecast a 0.2% decline.
In Europe, the manufacturing industry has continued to improve in recent months, with forward-looking indicators for new orders, new export orders and future output all rising to three-year highs. “This suggests that we’re seeing more than just frontloading,” said the ECB’s Schnabel.
Production in the continent’s critical auto sector seems to be holding up well even though it is subject to a 25% tariff and exports to the U.S. have softened, said Adrian Prettejohn, an economist at Capital Economics.
“We expect that the previous stockpiling of goods and the impact of tariffs [will] weigh on eurozone exports, but it is not clear that there will be as dramatic a fall as may have been expected,” Prettejohn said.
Even in China, President Trump’s chief antagonist on trade, the tariff tumult of the past few months hasn’t been as damaging as feared.
Chinese exports to the U.S. were about 10% lower in the first five months of the year than the same period a year earlier as tariffs bit into direct trade between the two economic superpowers. But, over the same period, overall exports grew 6%, Chinese customs data show, helped by rising shipments to Asia, Europe and Africa. Chinese exports to countries including Vietnam, Thailand and Mexico have been especially strong.
Economists say that likely reflects some degree of rerouting of Chinese exports through those countries and on to the U.S. In the first four months of 2025, U.S. imports from Southeast Asia were up 28% year over year, Census Bureau figures show. U.S. imports from Asia overall increased by 10% in the first five months of the year from a year earlier, to $582 billion, despite declining trade with China.
In the U.S. itself, households’ net worth remains high by historical standards as a share of disposable income, potentially allowing consumers to continue spending despite higher prices, Susan Collins, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, said in a speech Tuesday.
This resilience has allowed some exporters to the U.S. to pass part of the costs of tariffs on to their customers.
Retailers of Parmigiano-Reggiano, the Parmesan cheese produced in a designated area of northern Italy, increased prices in the U.S. to around $43 to $45 per kilogram from $42 this year, partly offsetting an additional 10% tariff applied since April. Sales have continued to surge in the U.S., rising by 9% in the first four months of this year, in line with previous months.
“Tariffs may eventually reduce the number of people that are able to afford [the cheese], but we haven’t seen that yet,” said Nicola Bertinelli, president of the Parmigiano Reggiano Consortium. Cheese importers managed to offset part of the impact by importing more inventory before the tariffs kicked in.
The cheese’s producers recently stepped up their sales efforts in the U.S., sponsoring this year’s Miami Open tennis tournament and unveiling a partnership with the New York Jets football team.
U.S. imports from Europe surged by 37% in the first five months of the year from a year earlier, to $421 billion, with moderate growth continuing in April and May, according to Census Bureau data.
Elevated profit margins at U.S. businesses suggest that they are able to bear some of the increased costs from tariffs, the Boston Fed’s Collins said. “As a result, the adverse impact of tariffs on labor market conditions and economic growth may be more limited,” she said.
To be sure, some of the strength in trade could unwind as firms slow their purchases in the coming months as payback for earlier hefty orders to beat the U.S. tariffs, economists say.
The global economic shrug also seems to have emboldened the Trump administration to press for even higher tariffs. And some economists say it is possible the shock will come with a delay.
“Probably, people did expect more immediate effects,” said the Peterson Institute’s Noland. Brexit, which didn’t cause the British economy to seize up when it happened but had a negative cumulative effect over time, could be a good analogy, Noland said.
The level of tariffs also matters. A 10% uniform levy on all U.S. imports might have a negligible economic effect, whereas rates of 30% or 50% could be much more problematic, Noland said.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned recently that such levels could cause trade between the European Union and the U.S. to freeze.
Fusion energy start-up claims to have cracked alchemy
San Francisco start-up says modified fusion process could be used to produce gold from mercury
A fusion energy start-up claims to have solved the millennia-old challenge of how to turn other metals into gold.
Chrysopoeia, commonly known as alchemy, has been pursued by civilisations as far back as ancient Egypt. Now San Francisco-based Marathon Fusion, a start-up focused on using nuclear fusion to generate power, has said the same process could be used to produce gold from mercury.
In an academic paper published last week, Marathon proposes that neutrons released in fusion reactions could be used to produce gold through a process known as nuclear transmutation.
The paper has not yet been peer-reviewed but has had a positive reception from some experts in the field. “On paper it looks great and everyone so far that I talk to remains intrigued and excited,” Dr Ahmed Diallo, a plasma physicist at the US Department of Energy’s national laboratory at Princeton who has read the study, told the Financial Times.
Marathon was founded in 2023 by chief executive Kyle Schiller and chief technology officer Adam Rutkowski, both 30, as an engineering company aiming to solve some of the technical challenges of building fusion power plants.
The start-up, which has 12 full-time employees, has raised $5.9mn in investment and about $4mn in US government grants to date. Initially the team worked on challenges such as how to make the fuel burning system in a fusion power plant more efficient and started thinking about the possibilities of nuclear transmutation earlier this year, Rutkowski said.
Scientists have synthesised gold using particle accelerators but the amounts have been tiny and the costs extremely high. Earlier this year physicists at Europe’s Cern said they had observed lead atoms transforming into gold during high-speed near-collisions inside the Large Hadron Collider.
The most common experimental approach to fusion uses a device called a tokamak to heat two hydrogen isotopes — usually deuterium and tritium — to extreme temperatures so that they fuse to create helium and vast amounts of energy in the form of neutrons.
Most plans for potential fusion power plants aim to combine some of the neutrons with lithium isotopes in a “breeding blanket” to create more tritium for future reactions.
Marathon’s proposal is to also introduce a mercury isotope, mercury-198, into the breeding blanket and use the high-energy neutrons to turn it into mercury-197.
Mercury-197 is an unstable isotope that then decays over about 64 hours into gold-197, the only stable isotope of the metal.
Rutkowski and Schiller say this means future fusion power plants that adopt this approach would be able to produce 5,000kg of gold a year, per gigawatt of electricity generation, without reducing the power output or tritium-breeding capacity of the system. At current prices, they estimate that amount of gold would be worth roughly the same as the electricity being generated, potentially doubling the revenue of the plant.
“The key insight here is that you can use this set of fast neutron reactions to make really large quantities of gold while satisfying the fuel cycle requirements of the system,” said Rutkowski, who previously worked at SpaceX.
One complication is that the presence of other types of mercury is likely to result in the production of unstable gold isotopes alongside gold-197, meaning the metal could be partially radioactive. Rutkowski estimates this could mean the gold has to be stored for 14 to 18 years for it to be labelled completely safe.
The process could also be used to make other precious metals, but Marathon predicts that the size of the gold market means production from fusion reactions could be absorbed without hurting prices. Currently about 3,500tn of gold is mined every year.
“Gold is in that sweet spot,” said Dan Brunner, a former chief technology officer at Bill Gates-backed Commonwealth Fusion System, who is now a scientific adviser to Marathon. “From a purely scientific perspective, it looks like it all hangs together. I think the challenge comes into actually engineering it into a practical system.”
Physicists first successfully fused atoms in the 1930s but no one has yet managed to produce more energy from a fusion experiment than the process consumes. Some scientists argue that fusion power plants remain decades away, however increased private investment in recent years has brought optimism. Commonwealth, for example, aims to turn on a demonstration power plant in 2027 and supply electricity to Google in the early 2030s.
In the 12 months to July fusion companies raised $2.6bn, bringing total investment to date across 53 companies worldwide to $9.8bn, according the most recent industry study, published on Tuesday.
Malcolm Handley, whose venture capital fund Strong Atomics was Marathon’s first investor, said the possibility of generating gold revenues from fusion power generation would unlock more funds for Marathon and other companies to accelerate their work.
Fusion companies had “signed up for a lot of hard problems”, he said. “The money this will unlock will make all of those problems easier.”
BYD executive labels UK EV subsidies ‘stupid’ as Chinese carmaker expands in Europe
Company EVP Stella Li pledges to create more than 5,000 jobs in Britain through dealerships by next year
BYD has criticised the UK’s new electric car subsidy scheme designed to keep out Chinese brands as “stupid”, warning that the discounts would work like a “drug” that will hurt the country’s market over the longer term.
In an interview with the Financial Times, BYD’s executive vice-president Stella Li, who oversees the carmaker’s international expansion, predicted BYD’s sales would not be affected by the UK government policy some executives have dubbed “backdoor Chinese tariffs”. She also pledged to create more than 5,000 UK jobs through dealerships by next year as part of its expansion policy in Europe.
The UK government last week announced a £650mn grant incentivising customers to purchase battery cars, with each model assessed according to the emissions of the electricity grid in the country or countries of critical production stages, essentially excluding vehicles made in China.
“It does not make any sense,” Li said. “This subsidy actually sounds like they will give some companies a benefit but it’s more like a drug. If you get rid of this, you will suffer.”
Under the scheme, customers buying cars considered “greenest” will receive a discount of up to £3,750 per vehicle when they buy a new electric car priced less than £37,000, while others in a lower emissions band will receive up to £1,500.
“The question is, is there any European government who can afford to fight against Chinese-made cars forever? No,” said Alfredo Altavilla, the former boss of ITA Airways who serves as special adviser for BYD’s European operations. “So what’s the purpose of doing all this?”
With their affordable battery-run cars equipped with advanced software, BYD and other Chinese brands have been expanding their market share to about 5 per cent in the UK and European EV markets, according to Schmidt Automotive Research.
To support its expansion, BYD plans to produce locally via its plants in Hungary and Turkey and open 2,000 retail stores across Europe, including about 280 in the UK. Each dealership will work exclusively for BYD, employing about 20 people.
Britain has not followed Brussels in imposing levies of up to 45 per cent on Chinese EV imports, alleging they received unfair subsidies from Beijing, instead opting for its subsidy programme.
The rise of the likes of BYD has sparked alarm across Europe’s traditional car industry, whose executives argue that Chinese importers will be able to absorb any tariffs or cut their prices while still making profit on their vehicles because they can build cars more cheaply in their domestic factories.
Underscoring that cost advantage, Stellantis-backed Leapmotor started offering the UK’s cheapest battery car after reducing its prices to match the government grant.
Meanwhile, the Chinese embassy in the UK has also warned the government against “exclusive policies and protectionism” following the unveiling of the new subsidies.
Li’s comments came as BYD signed a new sponsorship deal with Italian football club Inter Milan. In addition to having its name on the back of the shirts of Inter Milan footballers, BYD will provide the team and its top management with about 70 vehicles.
“My dream is in five years, you’re walking in a supermarket and everyone will know, ‘oh, BYD, we know them, they’re a high-tech company’,” Li said.