WSJ : International Paper Is on a Quest to Build a Better Cardboard Box

International Paper Is on a Quest to Build a Better Cardboard Box
Andy Silvernail was looking for a business that needed to be transformed in a big way when he agreed to lead the 127-year-old company

ATGLEN, Pa.—When a recruiter approached Andy Silvernail about joining International Paper IP 1.15%increase; green up pointing triangle to turn around the 127-year-old company, he initially said no.

Silvernail grew up in the shadows of a paper mill in Bucksport, Maine, that produced the paper on which Time magazine was printed. The mill closed in 2014, devastating his hometown. Silvernail told the recruiter that he didn’t want to lead a declining commodity business that could only win as the cheapest producer.

“Andy,” the recruiter said, “you’re wrong. It is not a paper business. It’s a packaging business, and it’s misunderstood.”

Silvernail, who had retired at 50 after a lucrative run as chief executive of IDEX, an industrial conglomerate, was dabbling in private equity at KKR and looking for a business that needed to be transformed in a big way. Now 54, he said he wouldn’t have taken the top job at International Paper if he thought it would be easy.

“There’s some possibility that you’re not going to succeed,” he said in an interview. “I like that.”

His first year on the job seemed promising. Wall Street cheered his plan to narrow the company’s focus to corrugated-cardboard packaging, hire more salespeople, close money-losing mills and revamp its network of box plants.

International Paper’s shares surged more than 70% from when his hire was announced in March 2024 through late January.

Silvernail got his first taste of trouble when President Trump’s tariff plans stoked fears that economic activity could tank. International Paper doesn’t sell many boxes across borders, yet its shares tumbled.

Cardboard boxes have become a reliable economic indicator. The better the economy, the more corrugated packaging is consumed—not just for Amazon.com deliveries, but to move everything from factory parts to fruits and vegetables around the country.

“If we see meaningful weakness from here, it’s going to stretch us,” Silvernail told investors last month. “There’s no doubt about it.” International Paper had just reported disappointing quarterly results and the Commerce Department had said that U.S. gross domestic product contracted in the first quarter.

Nonetheless, Silvernail left intact a forecast for North American profit to double by 2027.

If Silvernail’s targets are hit, the shares could double, said Philip Ng, an analyst at Jefferies, which made the stock one of its top picks.


“He’s shown great urgency and taken decisive actions,” Ng said.

Others said too much must go right for the company to meet his goals.

Besides turning around an old-economy behemoth with tens of thousands of employees and hundreds of factories, International Paper is also folding in DS Smith, a European company it acquired in January for $7.2 billion. And it is selling its volatile fluff-pulp business, which makes absorbent material for diapers. Meanwhile, the trade war has the box industry tearing up growth forecasts.

“There’s a lot of balls in the air,” said Jay Cushing, an analyst with the bond-research firm Gimme Credit. “Is it possible they can deliver on all those things at the same time? Yeah, but it just feels like a big lift.”

International Paper was founded in 1898, when 17 pulp and paper mills in the Northeast combined. It branched from newsprint into other types of paper and corrugated packaging—invented in England in the 1850s to maintain the shape of the era’s tall hats—and became one of the most durable brands in American business.

By 2021, International Paper had spun off the last of its paper businesses to focus on boxes. It was still acting like a paper company, though.

Eager to ensure that enough volume moved through its box plants to keep its mills running, it locked in yearslong deals with national accounts at cheap rates, Ng said.

When demand surged during the pandemic e-commerce boom, the company ran into operational problems, exacerbated by years of deferred maintenance. It had to satisfy low-margin contracts at the expense of more profitable regional and local customers, including farmers, meatpackers and manufacturers.

Its profit margins and shares slumped. Investors wondered how the company would pay its dividend after shedding its pulp business in Siberia, which was a cash cow.

Silvernail, who was a linebacker at Dartmouth College, has a style that is more like that of a ball coach than a bean counter. He earned a reputation as a management whiz when he rose through the ranks at Danaher, a conglomerate. He preaches an 80/20 philosophy: focusing on a small number of customers that account for the bulk of business and allocating resources accordingly.

His youth in Maine revolved around the mill. His friends’ fathers worked there. His future wife interned in the mill’s human-resources office, working for his football coach’s wife. His father-in-law was a millwright who retired soon after International Paper bought the mill in 2000.

Silvernail’s office in Memphis, Tenn., is decorated with a photo of the mill given to him by a childhood friend who went to work for International Paper after high school. The jobs of his friend and nearly 700 others were eliminated a week later when Silvernail decided to close a Campti, La., mill that was losing money.

“That’s a brutal decision,” Silvernail said. “Except economically. If it can’t stand on its own, it has to be a decision you make.”

The savings will be invested into other mills and put toward building new box plants and hiring salespeople, he said.

Silvernail wants salespeople in the back of delivery trucks talking to drivers and meeting with clients, with designers in tow, to come up with custom packaging. The idea is for International Paper to make what it can sell, not to try to sell what it makes, as it had been doing.

Silvernail said he wants International Paper to operate more like its recent acquisition, DS Smith. The European company is known for making corrugated packaging that is as good at protecting merchandise in transit as on supermarket shelves.

DS Smith adds about one million box designs to International Paper’s library of roughly two million. One DS Smith design that Silvernail admires is a display-ready carton for a confectioner. It is fitted with an elastic strap to keep chocolate bars pushed to the front and visible to customers. Sales of the candy rose once the design was deployed, Silvernail said.

The focus on finished boxes has the company investing heavily in its box plants. It broke ground this month on a $260 million plant in Waterloo, Iowa, where it will crank out patented leak-resistant boxes for the region’s slaughterhouses.

It will be twice as large as its newest plant, which opened in 2023 in Atglen, Pa. That highly automated facility corrugates, glues and slices huge rolls of brown paper that arrive by rail from the company’s containerboard mills in the South, which pulp loblolly pine trees or recycled boxes. Boxes come off the line at the plant in southeastern Pennsylvania at a rate of hundreds a minute.

Many are basic shipping boxes for e-commerce companies. The mushroom growers of Chester County, Pa., who produce more than half of the U.S. crop, are also big clients. Mushroom farmers are the type of regional, high-margin customers that make up about one-third of International Paper’s business but were let down when it couldn’t make boxes fast enough, Silvernail said.

“We’re not spiking the football yet,” he said. “We were losing market share, and we’re now holding our own.”

FT : Dovid Efune launches fresh Telegraph bid with Brexiter businessman Jeremy H

Dovid Efune launches fresh Telegraph bid with Brexiter businessman Jeremy Hosking
Former Conservative chancellor Nadhim Zahawi also supporting British-led consortium

New York Sun owner Dovid Efune is launching a fresh effort to buy the Telegraph with backing from multimillionaire Brexit backer Jeremy Hosking and former UK chancellor Nadhim Zahawi in what has been dubbed a “British bid” for the newspaper.

UK-born Efune was in exclusive talks to acquire the newspaper from Abu Dhabi-backed RedBird IMI until December, and has since remained in discussions with bankers on the deal despite the lack of guaranteed funding. 

Efune’s attempts to secure money for his bid from US funds failed, leaving RedBird boss Gerry Cardinale to try to take full control by buying out IMI.

But Efune has now secured financial backing from Hosking, a British investment executive, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Hosking donated heavily to the Reclaim and Conservative parties in the past, as well as to Vote Leave before the 2016 Brexit referendum.

Zahawi, who was involved in RedBird IMI’s move to take control of the Telegraph last year, has also backed Efune’s bid, adding rightwing political support.

Aryeh Bourkoff at LionTree, who is advising Efune, has spent time in the UAE in the past talking to IMI, the Abu Dhabi investment group that controls the Telegraph alongside US-based Redbird, according to people close to the situation. 

A person with knowledge of Efune’s latest offer described it as the “British bid” as “the vast bulk of the funding comes from Brits and Efune himself is obviously British”. They added: “Jeremy Hosking is a major backer, as is Nadhim Zahawi.”

Efune will travel to London next week for meetings about the deal, they said. Hosking has already met senior Telegraph management, according to a separate person with knowledge of the situation. 

On Saturday, a spokesperson for Efune told the Financial Times that he “has been working quietly over the past months and has now secured commitments from a group of backers amounting to a significant bulk of the equity capital required”.

Hosking told the FT: “I fully support the Efune bid as they are appropriate owners of this British asset, and have already offered financial backing. If it succeeds I am confident I will be significantly involved.”

Zahawi declined to comment. RedBird IMI did not respond to requests for comment.

Many in the industry had assumed that Cardinale has the advantage in the battle for control of the Telegraph. He has also held talks with other UK-based investors and media groups, including Lord Rothermere’s group that owns Telegraph rival the Daily Mail. 

The dealmaking saga began two years ago when Lloyds Banking Group seized control of the Telegraph after the Barclay family, which had owned it since 2004, left the bank with unpaid debts.

RedBird IMI took control of the media group for about £550mn but its bid to convert this into full ownership was blocked by the then-Conservative government owing to concerns about a foreign state-backed fund owning an influential newspaper.

The UK government this week confirmed plans to increase the cap on foreign state ownership of British national newspapers to 15 per cent, meaning that IMI could in future retain a small stake in a Cardinale-led group.

WSJ : U.S. Drillers Say Peak Shale Has Arrived

U.S. Drillers Say Peak Shale Has Arrived
Lower oil prices are expected to precipitate a decrease in crude output that won’t easily be reversed

Key Points
  • U.S. oil production is expected to decline in 2026, marking the first year-on-year decrease in roughly a decade, outside of the pandemic.
  • Shale companies are slowing production because of low crude prices and pressure to return cash to shareholders.
  • The Permian Basin’s output growth is slowing, and other large fields haven’t recovered since 2020, suggesting an end to shale dominance.

President Trump, who promised to uplift oil and gas, is set to preside over a decline in shale production.

Drillers that made the U.S. the world’s top oil producer say they are hitting the brakes to weather a period of low crude prices and that the gusher has likely peaked. Some of the largest producers, including Diamondback Energy, recently told investors that they would be spending less this year and plan to drop rigs.

The U.S. is on track to see crude oil production modestly increase in 2025—in part because of growth in fields offshore—before declining next year by 1% to 13.33 million barrels a day, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights. That would mark the first year-on-year decrease in roughly a decade, outside the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We believe we are at a tipping point for U.S. oil production at current commodity prices,” Travis Stice, chief executive of Permian driller Diamondback, said in a letter to shareholders last week.

Trump had promised that his administration would bring a new dawn for America’s frackers by killing regulations and allowing them to build new pipelines. But even before he took office, U.S. oil production was on track to flatten out and fall by the end of the decade.

Now, the upheaval in the global economy induced by his tariffs, coupled with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies’ decision to pump more oil, have likely compressed that timeline, crude-oil CEOs say. The disruption has been most notable in the Permian Basin, the country’s biggest oil field.

Oil prices have fallen to $62.49 a barrel, down about 13% since Trump’s early April tariff blitz. That price is roughly equivalent to about $45 in 2015 dollars—below the average price that sent the oil industry into a painful downturn that year.

“On an inflation-adjusted basis, current prices are at amongst the lowest they’ve ever been,” Paul McKinney, CEO of Permian driller Ring Energy, said in an interview. Prices should be around $85 a barrel to encourage companies to drill, he said.

Although companies boast having healthier balance sheets than they did during previous price drops, they have also committed to return cash to shareholders. Because shale wells taper off quickly, any meaningful drop in production would be hard to reverse, as doing so would funnel cash out of shareholders’ pockets and into the field.

“The amount of capital required to get back to 13 million barrels a day or 6 million barrels a day in the Permian might be an untenable lift for the business model that we put in place,” Stice told analysts.

In just 15 years, shale companies have increased U.S. oil production by about 8 million barrels of oil a day. The boom reduced the country’s reliance on foreign oil and saved American consumers billions of dollars via lower gasoline prices. But in recent years, signs that the era of shale dominance is coming to an end have multiplied.

Production growth in the Permian is slowing. The region’s output grew by fewer than 200,000 barrels a day over the past 12 months, compared with average annual growth of more than 630,000 barrels a day since it started booming in 2017, according to the Energy Information Administration.

The next two largest onshore U.S. oil fields, the Bakken Shale in North Dakota and the Eagle Ford Shale in South Texas, never fully recovered after the 2020 pandemic. Production there has flatlined for years.

Companies have made strides in how efficiently they drill and frack wells. ConocoPhillips and Occidental Petroleum recently said they plan to spend less this year—and still hit their production targets. But much of the improvement has now played out, and there is only so much firms can do to wring more crude from the aging shale fields, analysts say—barring any technological breakthrough.

Others say shale companies could eventually push the Permian’s output higher if prices surged from current levels, even as the region’s rock quality declines. That is in part because their costs are lower after years of building infrastructure to ferry crude to market.

The most recent oil-price drop shaved about 150,000 barrels a day from consulting firm Rystad Energy’s forecast for oil-production growth in the contiguous U.S. this year. If companies keep their current spending cuts, several are likely to see production declines in 2026, said Amber McCullagh, an analyst at Rystad. “The obvious first lever is for those Permian growth ambitions to be trimmed,” she said.

One reason for the slowdown in activity is that companies are reluctant to drill through low prices when their inventory of premium wells is shrinking.

EOG Resources, one of the pioneers of shale, has about three to four years worth of high-quality locations to drill wells that could perform as proficiently as its current slate of wells, according to estimates by analytics firm FLOW Partners.

After that inventory is drilled, EOG will have to keep finding ways to cut costs as the quality of its inventory declines, said Tom Loughrey, FLOW’s president. For the past few years, EOG has grown largely by striking private land deals. But because of the size of the inventory it needs to replace, it might eventually need to buy a competitor outright. “Corporate M&A is the problem solver,” he said.

EOG declined to comment.

Houston-based EOG, which unlocked troves of natural gas in South Texas 15 years ago, is one of the companies looking abroad as U.S. shale regions age. It recently signed an agreement with Bahrain’s Bapco Energies to evaluate a gas exploration prospect in that country.

Another shale pioneer, Continental Resources, helped turn North Dakota into a leading oil and gas producer. Earlier this year, it said it would be joining with Turkish Petroleum, Turkey’s national oil company, to explore and produce shale oil and gas in that country.

WSJ : The Science Behind Mining for Riches on the Deep-Sea Floor

The Science Behind Mining for Riches on the Deep-Sea Floor
Conservationists say retrieving mineral-rich rocks will destroy sea life. Environmental studies show conflicting results.

Key Points
  • Deep-sea mining, off-limits in international waters since 1982, is gaining traction with backing from the Trump administration.
  • Scientists are studying the coexistence of marine life and mining for key elements including cobalt and nickel.
  • Environmental-impact studies show conflicting results.

Explorers have dreamed of harvesting deep-sea metals since the 1870s, when the British scientific ship HMS Challenger pulled up mineral-laden rocks on its round-the-world voyage.

The first commercial effort to exploit these riches failed a century later. In 1970, a U.S. company hoisted 60,000 rocks from the seafloor off the coast of Charleston, S.C., and then dumped most overboard because they didn’t have enough mineral content.

Today, deep-sea mining—off-limits in international waters since 1982—has the backing of the Trump administration. Ocean scientists are racing to determine whether marine life can coexist with machines that rake their habitat for undersea treasure.

The aim is to vacuum up rocks containing cobalt, nickel, copper and manganese—elements used in electric-vehicle batteries, smartphones, medical devices and artificial-intelligence hardware.

The potato-size polymetallic nodules are found on vast flat areas of the seafloor called abyssal plains. The most valuable region is a 1.7 million square mile part of the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and Mexico known as the Clarion–Clipperton Zone.

Other mineral deposits known as polymetallic sulfides collect around hydrothermal vents, fissures that discharge water from geothermal hot spots, while cobalt-rich crusts are found on underwater seamounts in shallower water.


Last month, President Trump directed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to grant permits to mining companies in both U.S. and international waters over the objections of the International Seabed Authority. The agency has legal authority over seabed resources under the U.N. Convention of the Law of the Sea, a 1982 treaty that has been signed by more than 160 countries. The U.S. isn’t a signatory.

In April, five days after Trump’s executive order was issued, The Metals Co. of Vancouver, British Columbia, applied for permits to conduct deep-sea exploration and mining in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone.

The sought-after nodules formed slowly over millions of years as minerals dissolved in seawater and aggregated in thin layers around fragments of shells, bits of sand and even fish teeth.

“The nodules sit on the seafloor like cobbles in a street,” said Diva Amon, a marine biologist at the Benioff Ocean Science Laboratory at the University of California, Santa Barbara.


Assessing the value of these minerals is difficult because the cost of bringing them to the surface is unknown and market prices fluctuate. A 2024 analysis by the consulting firm Arthur D. Little put the potential commercial value of the undersea minerals at $20 trillion.

The forbidding areas of the ocean where minerals are found are home to a surprising variety of marine life—mostly small, slow-moving creatures that have evolved to get most of their food from dead animals and plankton falling from above.

“When you get to the bottom, it really does appear like there’s not that much life, but that’s because a lot of the life down there is much smaller than elsewhere in the ocean,” said Amon, who has captured video of these areas with robotic submersibles. “But small doesn’t mean insignificant.”

A 2023 survey of marine life in the proposed mining area by the Natural History Museum of London found that 90% of marine creatures living near the nodules are new species, challenging the idea that the vast mining area is an ecological wasteland.


Conservationists say that sea mining will destroy this bottom-dwelling sea life, while mud and debris from the mining process will disturb shallower parts of the ocean.

Thomas Peacock, professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, spent several weeks at sea in 2021 during a test, allowed by the International Seabed Authority, of methods of mining the seafloor. He measured the plumes of sediment stirred up by mining machines and found that the sediment didn’t travel as far as originally believed, and might do less damage to some kinds of marine life.

More recently, a team from the U.K.’s National Oceanography Center discovered that marine life is returning to areas of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone that underwent similar tests in 1979, suggesting that the environmental impact might be limited to the mining site.

If deep-sea mining companies get the green light, Peacock said, scientists should work alongside them to monitor their activity. Peacock’s team developed models to estimate where the sediment would be deposited, a step in figuring out potential damage.

“What is really needed is running these operations at an increasingly larger scale, monitoring those operations, testing and showing that the models do indeed have the ability to predict as you scale up these operations,” Peacock said. “That’s the prudent scientific thing to do.”

SCMP : China’s next-gen surveillance tools get AI boost to target Telegram and V

China’s next-gen surveillance tools get AI boost to target Telegram and VPN users
Annual policing tech expo offers glimpse of law enforcement future as Beijing ramps up domestic security drive amid ‘lone wolf’ attacks

The future of policing in China will be powered by artificial intelligence surveillance tools that can monitor Telegram and VPN users, as well as DeepSeek-inspired models that can analyse leads for investigations, according to exhibitors at an annual policing expo in Beijing.
The surveillance equipment was showcased this week at the 12th China International Exhibition on Police Equipment, which ended on Saturday.

The event – the largest policing technology expo of its kind – offered police and defence equipment suppliers from across the country a chance to compete for orders from public security departments

The suppliers included research institutes affiliated with the Ministry of Public Security – the country’s top police agency – as well as various private companies.

AI technology was a key selling point for products at the expo, including surveillance tools, criminal investigation devices and drone-jamming equipment.
One of the technologies showcased was the “multidimensional intelligence analysis of individual extreme behaviour”, presented by the Third Research Institute of the Ministry of Public Security.

China has faced security challenges in issuing early warnings for “individual extreme incidents”, according to the institute.

The institute has developed AI models to analyse shopping records, search histories, and social media posts to identify high-risk individuals.

The institute said the tool was developed based on the AI agent service by Chinese start-up Dify, an open-source large language model (LLM) application development platform.

Several “lone wolf” attacks over the past year have shocked the Chinese public. The worst attack happened in November, when a man named Fan Weiqiu drove an SUV into a crowd outside a sports centre in the southern city of Zhuhai, killing at least 35 people and injuring at least 43.
Fan was executed in January.

Since that attack, Beijing has repeatedly stressed the need to maintain social stability, urging local officials to identify people prone to carrying out such “extreme incidents”.
The official research institute also showcased AI-assisted mobile phone forensic tools and fugitive tracking systems.

Many manufacturers highlighted the security of police equipment as a key selling point.

One company claimed that its tool could monitor police equipment usage, particularly internet usage, to swiftly detect the “illegal publication, transmission, storage or processing of confidential information”, thereby “ensuring the confidentiality and security of state secrets and police work”.

Last year, Beijing made significant revisions to expand the scope of a law intended to protect state secrets.

Subsequent government regulations urged manufacturers to “utilise new technologies, methods and processes to innovate security and confidentiality products, as well as confidential technical equipment”.

The regulations, which came into effect in September, promised rewards for individuals and organisations that “contribute significantly” to the development of such technologies.

Confidentiality was also a theme at this year’s exhibition.

Visitors had to apply to attend the exhibition using a QR code. They were required to provide their real name and ID number, then go through a screening process before being permitted entry to the expo.

Many prospective buyers at the exhibition were wearing police uniforms, and some exhibitors required visitors to show their police ID before being allowed to photograph their products. In some cases, manuals were restricted to police officers for products that could only be bought by law enforcement agencies.

“Without cybersecurity, there is no national security” read a prominent slogan in the exhibition hall.
The Third Research Institute of the Ministry of Public Security showcased a tool that it claimed could monitor Telegram, a widely used instant messaging app known for its privacy and security. It said the tool could monitor Telegram accounts registered with Chinese mobile phone numbers, which have strict real-name requirements.

To date, the tool has collected more than 30 billion messages and monitored 70 million Telegram accounts, as well as 390,000 public channels and groups, according to the institution.

A promotional video from the institution showed how drug transactions could be monitored in group chats by logging into Telegram with a hacked Chinese mobile phone number.

It also said that messages on Telegram involving topics related to politics and Hong Kong could be monitored. The institute cited the widespread use of Telegram by anti-government protesters in Hong Kong in 2019 as one of the reasons for developing the tool.

In mainland China, internet users have to use virtual private networks (VPNs) to access Telegram, as well as the website for the South China Morning Post. But a technology company from the eastern city of Nanjing showcased a tool capable of detecting such use.

Several other companies promoted large models for police use and emphasised their products were based on Chinese open-source models such as DeepSeek. They said these AI models could help the police analyse leads more effectively, manage devices, investigate crime scenes and interrogate suspects.

A Beijing-based company claimed that its AI tool could conduct real-time psychological tests on suspects to facilitate “intelligent interrogation” and swiftly “break through their psychological defences”.

Large tech companies such as Huawei, iFlyTek and Hikvision also promoted their AI models as being suitable for use in law enforcement scenarios.

WSJ : To Prove They Don’t Cheat With AI, Students Are Turning to…AI

To Prove They Don’t Cheat With AI, Students Are Turning to…AI
It’s a battle of the bots: Teachers use AI detection to spot cheating while students use it to maintain innocence

Students don’t want to be accused of cheating, so they’re using artificial intelligence to make sure their school essays sound human.

Teachers use AI-detection software to identify AI-generated work. Students, in turn, are pre-emptively running their original writing through the same tools, to see if anything might be flagged for sounding too robotic.

Miles Pulvers, a 21-year-old student at Northeastern University in Boston, says he never uses AI to write essays, but he runs all of them through an AI detector before submitting them.

“I take great pride in my writing,” says Pulvers. “Before AI, I had peace of mind that whatever I would submit would be accepted. Now I see some of my writing being flagged as possibly being AI-generated when it’s not. It’s kind of annoying, but it’s part of the deal in 2025.”

AI detectors might sound the alarm if writing contains too many adjectives, long sentences and em dashes—one of my own favorite forms of punctuation. When that happens to Pulvers, he rewrites the sentences or paragraphs in question. He tests the essay again, as often as needed until the detector says it has a low probability of bot involvement.

He and other students I interviewed say teachers in recent months have become more suspicious of students. That’s often for good reason: Many do use AI to cheat.

“They’re using AI to write their essays, and then they use AI detectors to humanize them,” says Leticia Villaseñor, a history teacher at a private Los Angeles high school, where she regularly uses an AI detector to catch cheaters. “I try to have my students do as many written assignments as possible in class, because if it’s homework, half of them will use AI.”

I’m not a robot
For students who swear they’re not having a chatbot write their essays, trying to prove their humanity has become a challenge.

Marcus Wooler, one of Villaseñor’s students, said some students are wrongly accused. A friend of his had to show a teacher his Google Doc history to clear himself. Wooler decided he should run his honestly crafted essays through an AI detector before submitting them. “It’s a good precaution,” says the 16-year-old.

Sometimes, it’s the students who use grammar-checking tools—or who learned to write more formally—who get dinged, says Devan Leos, co-founder of Undetectable AI, which makes a popular AI detector and “humanizer.” Some red flags include the use of unique words such as “delve” and “tapestry” and phrases like “valuable insight” and “crucial role.”

“It’s like you get penalized for being a proper writer,” Leos says.

Miles Pulvers, a Northeastern University student, runs his essays through AI detectors such as Undetectable AI. When his original writing is flagged as possibly written by AI, he rewrites it until it’s judged more likely human. Photo: Miles Pulvers
Harrison Checketts, a 16-year-old student who takes Villaseñor’s history class, says he once ran an English paper he wrote himself through five different AI detectors and they all showed different results. Some were highly confident that parts were written by AI; others said there was no chance a machine did it. He decided not to use AI detectors after that. “The teachers are the real AI detectors,” he says. “They can tell.”

Claire Krieger, a 20-year-old student at Fordham University in New York, runs all of her papers through AI detectors but says they can provide a false sense of security.

One of the tools she used for an English paper last year flagged some quotes she cited from a book, but that’s it. Her professor used a different AI detector, which flagged a sentence Krieger says she wrote. She met with her professor in person, explained that it wasn’t AI-generated and affirmed her commitment to academic integrity.

‘A police state’
The stakes for students accused of submitting AI-generated work are high. A University of North Georgia student was placed on academic probation last year after being accused of plagiarism. She told numerous media outlets that she used Grammarly, an AI writing assistant, to correct spelling and grammar mistakes—not to cheat. She also partnered with Grammarly to produce educational videos about how to use the tool for schoolwork.

The incident prompted Grammarly to create a new authorship tool. It tracks the writing process, showing where text is typed into a document or pasted, as well as which parts of a document are created or modified with AI. When the paper is complete, a report is generated, which students can show teachers if there is any question about the source of their work.

Jenny Maxwell, Grammarly’s head of education, says the fear around AI use in schools is causing students to spend a lot of extra time rewriting to sound more human. More than 500,000 people use Grammarly’s AI and plagiarism detection tool each week, and the majority are students, a spokeswoman says.

These days, Maxwell says, it’s a “police state of writing.”

FT : Does Moody’s US downgrade matter?

Does Moody’s US downgrade matter?
What a one-notch cut means for the market, the banks, and the White House

On Friday, Moody’s pulled the trigger and stripped the US’s of its last top rating — downgrading it one notch from Aaa to Aa1.

But does it matter?

We looked into the implications of a downgrade a couple of months ago, back when Moody’s still seemed determined to ignore the sixty-foot flashing neon signage writing on the wall.

From a stock market perspective, who knows? We have no clue whether, or how much, it will matter when trading opens on Monday. Sure, S&P’s US sovereign downgrade in August 2011 prompted the worst single day fall in US stock prices since the (admittedly then recent) global financial crisis. But the market quickly recovered. This may have been people freaked out about what the downgrade might mean to the financial plumbing.

So, does the downgrade matter to financial plumbers this time? From a mechanical perspective, the answer is almost certainly “not at all”.

Banks’ risk-weighted capital asset calculations look unlikely to be impacted by the rating change. This is because regulators don’t tend to differentiate between Aaa and Aa1 when setting capital risk-weights. For example, this is how the BIS sets out its standardised approach for credit risk as it applies to individual claims to calculate their risk-weighted assets in relation to sovereigns:

Moody’s could’ve done a three-notch downgrade — from Aaa all the way to Aa3 — and nothing would’ve changed on this front.

How about collateral management? A note from Barclays on Friday night looked at the implications:

For collateral purposes, a downgrade to Aa1 is also unlikely to have an effect. For instance, DTCC and CME refer to the asset class as US Treasuries and the haircut is a function of the maturity and security type (TIPS/FRNs) but not the ratings. At LCH, a downgrade to Aa1 is unlikely to lead to a change. For instance, USTs and Gilts have similar haircuts, even as the latter are rated lower.

Furthermore, they reckon that the move won’t trigger moves at the short end of the curve because:

Legislation since the financial crisis has reduced the use of explicit ratings guidelines in investment mandates.

So, they don’t expect waves of asset sales from the circa $4.5tn in Treasury and Treasury repo in money funds.

Moving away from financial markets, the downgrade may well matter to Moody’s themselves. If S&P Global Ratings’ experience in 2011 is anything to go by, the firm will be in for a rough ride. Following S&P’s downgrade more than a decade ago, US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner threw a bit of a public wobbly, and filmmaker Michael Moore called on Obama to arrest the firm’s CEO. As we wrote in March:

Someone hired a plane to fly past their rating agency’s offices dragging a banner proclaiming that they should all be fired, and a bunch of local governments terminated their business with the firm.

Meanwhile, and apparently unrelatedly, the Justice Department launched an investigation into S&P. Within a few weeks, CEO Deven Sharma had left the company. When things moved from being just an investigation to an actual $5bn federal lawsuit for allegedly misleading banks about the credibility of its ratings before the 2008 financial crisis, S&P called this direct retaliation for its downgrade.

Following the downgrade, Moritz Kraemer — formerly Global Chief Rating Officer of Sovereign Ratings at S&P Global Ratings — wrote on LinkedIn that the danger of retribution was real:

In the US, the rating agencies are regulated and licensed by the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission). As things stand in America today, we must wonder, whether the SEC can act independently from the wishes of the White House. Remember that the previous SEC chairman, Gary Gensler, resigned on inauguration day, making way for a Trump acolyte. Will Trump be so enraged by the downgrade of the US (which he surely will take personal) that he will demand his pound of flesh and impose revenge on Moody’s.

We’ve already seen the White House dismiss the analysis, and lash out at Mark Zandi, Moody’s chief economist. Steven Cheung, assistant to the President, tweeted: “Nobody takes his ‘analysis’ seriously. He has been proven wrong time and time again.”

As reported in MainFT, Zandi was not an author of this report and works for Moody’s Analytics, a separate part of the company that is not part of its ratings business.

More generally, while a one-notch downgrade from Aaa may not have huge market implications it is still important.

Fiscally, Moody’s has long projected near-basket-case metrics for the United States. In reaffirming the Aaa rating back in March it wrote that the country’s Aaa rating leaned instead on the country’s “extraordinary economic strength and the unique and central roles of the dollar and Treasury bond market in global finance”.

And in its previous rating report reaffirming the Aaa rating back in November 2023, Moody’s wrote:

A weakening of institutions and governance strength, such as through deterioration in monetary and macroeconomic policy effectiveness or the quality of legislative and judicial institutions, could also strain the rating.

The world has moved on since 2023, and Moody’s is marking-to-market.

FT : The deal that has spurred Apollo’s plan to remake Wall Street

The deal that has spurred Apollo’s plan to remake Wall Street
Acquisition of securitised asset business from Credit Suisse has become a cornerstone of private asset group’s strategy

Volatile financial markets, like the ones we face now thanks to America’s ever evolving tariff policies, often create unique opportunities. Think back to what happened in October 2022, shortly after Credit Suisse launched a major business restructuring and the credit-rating agencies announced they were downgrading the Swiss bank’s debt, adding to the turmoil that was engulfing the then 166-year-old financial institution.

One of the immediate steps the bank took in response to the waning confidence in it was to accelerate the sale of the bulk of one of its crown jewels, the so-called securitised products group, a large asset-based lending business that created — or “originated”, in financial jargon — products such as mortgages and auto loans and sold them to investors.

The business was beloved inside Credit Suisse, and one of its most profitable. But sometimes the market forces you to do things you don’t want to do, and the sale of this business was one of those times.

As ever, the always opportunistic Apollo Global Management, the alternative asset manager, was only too happy to pounce on Credit Suisse’s growing financial distress. That is Apollo’s DNA. In short order,j before other, more highly regulated financial institutions could act, Apollo cut a deal with Credit Suisse to buy the New York-based business.

Apollo bought it all for a slight discount to the par value of the loan portfolio, according to one insider. It renamed the business Atlas SP and set it up as a separate unit, with Apollo as the majority owner and Mass Mutual, the big insurance company, and the sovereign wealth fund Abu Dhabi Investment Authority as minority investors.

Since the deal closed in February 2023, Atlas SP has become the cornerstone of Apollo’s ambitious plan to remake Wall Street, through the market for private credit. “When you look back at really, really strategic transactions for this firm, that’s got to be up there,” Apollo president Jim Zelter told me in December, “because it really was a first massive foray of an origination business of that scale, owned by a non-bank.” He said he jokes with Marc Rowan, Apollo’s chief executive, that five years ago they didn’t even know how to spell Atlas.

Now, it’s central to the firm’s core strategy of increasing the amount of private credit that Apollo originates to generate the income-producing assets it needs to cover the liabilities generated by Athene, Apollo’s wholly owned annuity business. It captures the spread between the two as profit.

Of Apollo’s $785bn of assets under management, some $641bn is private credit, with the balance being private equity. Apollo has long preached that there is less risk in its business of the kind of deposit runs and loss of investor confidence seen by some banks because the duration of its assets and liabilities are both long-term and closely matched. The message is starting to get out. The company has a market value of $86bn, up more than 250 per cent in the past five years, although its stock was hit hard in the recent broader market turmoil. After a recent rally, it still down around 13 per cent so far in 2025.

Apollo originated some $220bn of assets in 2024 and has the ambition to raise that to $275bn in under five years. Atlas SP is the key to achieving that aspiration. It originated more than $40bn of assets last year with a goal to do $50bn this year. Atlas SP is one of the 16 loan-origination “platforms” that Apollo either owns or has a majority equity investment in but has a particular strategic importance. Atlas SP has 300 clients, and each of those borrowers is an originator of small loans itself, giving the business tentacles across a huge swath of American businesses.

In many ways, Apollo’s origination businesses, with Atlas at the centre, has helped fill part of the void the old GE Capital left after it was dismantled and sold off a decade ago. It now provides all sorts of loans for inventory and equipment, vehicles and fleets, mortgages, investment funds and for building out digital infrastructure. The Atlas deal, John Zito, Apollo’s co-president, told a Grant’s Interest Rate Observer investor conference a year ago, “will be looked at as probably the most innovative M&A transaction over the last five years”.

At the moment, the future is here, and it seems to be working just fine. The question is: Will there be a reckoning for private credit and, if so, when will it be, and what will cause it? In a May 2 Bloomberg interview, Robert O’Leary, the co-CEO of Oaktree Capital said some limited partners in private credit funds, anticipating a recession, have already started selling their stakes at discounts as large as 50 cents on the dollar, and it could get much worse, he said, if, and when, the real forced selling begins.

FT : French nuclear company Orano explores sale of Niger uranium assets

French nuclear company Orano explores sale of Niger uranium assets
Process to sell subsidiaries follows breakdown of ties with west African country’s military government

French state-owned nuclear fuel company Orano is exploring the sale of its uranium assets in Niger after the breakdown of its relationship with the west African country’s military rulers.

Orano operates three mines in Niger in a joint venture with the Russian-backed government that seized power in a coup two years ago, but was stripped of its rights over one project in June and forced to stop work at another soon after because of financial pressures.

It said at the time that Niger had blocked uranium exports and halted payments of its obligations as joint venture partners since the 2023 coup that toppled the country’s pro-western government.

This has forced Orano to look at a possible sale of its Niger assets, according to multiple people familiar with the matter.

The withdrawal of Orano would be the latest confirmation of the loss of French influence in the region and the failure of its “Françafrique” policy under which Paris sought to maintain influence in its former colonies. France has also withdrawn soldiers from Chad, Mali and Burkina Faso in recent years.

The sales process risks being politically fraught for the French government, which owns 90 per cent of the business, with Russian and Chinese buyers said to be circling the assets.

Orano in December said that it no longer controlled any of its subsidiaries in Niger and launched several international arbitration cases against the state. Orano also began legal proceedings against the junta after its offices were raided by Niger’s intelligence agency this month, leading to the arrest of a local company director.

Orano declined to comment on the sales process, saying it was focused on its arbitration cases. But in a statement to the Financial Times it said that “several parties have expressed their interests for the mining assets of the group in Niger and are at liberty to submit offers if they wish to”.

Curzon Uranium, part of the Curzon group of companies, is one of those seeking to buy the Niger assets, said its founder Nick Clarke.

“We need to find a peaceful solution to this that gets the product moving,” said Clarke, adding he was “actively engaged” with an unnamed Middle Eastern investor over a joint purchase, with Chinese and Russians buyers also rumoured. “It will be a competitive process,” he said.

Niger is a relatively small player in uranium, producing about 5 per cent of global output, but it plays an outsized role in France and supplies about a fifth of the country’s natural uranium.

Analysts have warned of a looming uranium supply crunch, as nations including China and the US look to deploy more nuclear. The radioactive metal is turned into the fuel used to power nuclear reactors.

Niger is part of the “coup belt” across west and central Africa where militaries have ousted a host of governments in recent years. Niger, alongside Burkina Faso and Mali, have all drawn closer to Russia at the expense of former colonial power France and the west.

Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali have introduced new mining codes granting them access to a greater share of mining revenues and a larger stake for the governments. Niger’s government has been approached for comment.

SCMP : Hong Kong prepares for a grand homecoming as mainland firms face US delis

Hong Kong prepares for a grand homecoming as mainland firms face US delisting threats
Delisting pressure on US-listed companies from the mainland could be a jackpot for Hong Kong markets

A month ago, Patrick Tsang, the CEO of Deloitte China, learned that the US government had declined to rule out the possibility that Washington could delist Chinese stocks from American exchanges.

For Tsang, a long-time accountant who is also a member of Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu’s policy unit, the delisting threat seemed like a golden opportunity for Hong Kong.
Around 286 mainland ­companies trading in the US came under threat of delisting after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in early April that “everything’s on the table”, as worries about decoupling emerged amid a US-China tariff war.

Tsang immediately rounded up a capital markets team at Deloitte to produce proposals on how Hong Kong could prepare for the situation.

Last week, he submitted a paper to the Chief Executive’s Policy Unit, outlining four major strategies to bolster Hong Kong’s financial preparedness, including simplifying listing procedures and finding funding for these companies.

“Even if China and the US reach an agreement on tariffs, the risk of delisting for many Chinese firms listed in the US persists,” Tsang said. “Delisting remains a tool in the ongoing US-China trade dispute.”

Tsang said Hong Kong must leverage its “one country, two systems” framework and its status as an international financial centre “to provide a safety net for US-listed mainland firms facing potential delisting”.

Zeekr, an electric-vehicle unit of Geely Auto, China’s second-largest carmaker, became the first mainland company after the trade war heated up to say it would delist from the US by going private, according to a May 7 exchange filing.
Tsang said some of Deloitte’s clients have started preparing for delisting.

“Some existing clients have planned to delist in the US and list in Hong Kong instead,” he said. “For the listing candidates, there are now fewer than 5 per cent who want to list in the US, compared with before when there were about 20 per cent who would like to list in the US.”

“Hong Kong is the market they want to come to raise funds and some investment banks have set up special teams to support these clients.”

Last month, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po asked Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEX) and the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) to prepare for the US-listed companies to come to Hong Kong.
“In response to the latest geopolitical changes, the government has directed HKEX and the SFC to be prepared to make Hong Kong the preferred listing destination for the return of [US-listed mainland stocks],” said Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury Christopher Hui Ching-yu in a written interview.

Hui said the SFC and HKEX would push ahead with reforms, including reviewing listing requirements, improving vetting processes, optimising the thresholds for dual primary and secondary listings, as well as other matters.

“This comprehensive review aims to facilitate listing and fundraising of overseas enterprises and companies from emerging industries, the return of [US-listed mainland firms] as well as fundraising and development of mainland enterprises overseas,” Hui said.

HKEX chairman Carlson Tong Ka-shing said the bourse operator was committed to facilitating the listing of high-quality firms in Hong Kong, including US-listed mainland companies.

“HKEX has an established framework for overseas-listed companies to seek a primary or secondary listing in Hong Kong, and we will continue to closely monitor global developments,” Tong told the Post.

Tong said the China Securities Regulatory Commission last week pledged to support “the homecoming” of mainland firms listed overseas.

“This development is encouraging, as we expect more companies to seek dual listings in Hong Kong, further strengthening the city’s position as a premier [IPO] and capital markets hub,” Tong said.

In 2018, HKEX introduced reforms to allow pre-revenue biotechnology firms and companies with different share classes to list in the city.

Since then, some 360 new-economy firms have raised HK$1.03 trillion (US$133 billion) in Hong Kong via initial public offerings, including 33 US-listed mainland firms seeking dual primary or secondary listings, according to HKEX data.

These reforms made listings possible for mainland smartphone maker Xiaomi and online food delivery platform Meituan – which have multiple share classes – and Alibaba Group Holding, owner of the Post.

In 2023, HKEX introduced the Chapter 18C listing rule, allowing specialist technology firms with little to no revenue to list. Subsequently, three firms have raised a total of HK$2.9 billion, according to HKEX data.

A total of 33 firms trading in the US and Hong Kong are heavyweights, as they account for 70 per cent of the total market capitalisation of all US-listed mainland firms, HKEX data showed.

“The focus is now on how to attract the others … interested in being listed in Hong Kong to list here,” said Joseph Chan Ho-lim, the undersecretary for financial services and the treasury, in a Legislative Council meeting on May 7.

E-commerce platform operator PDD Holdings and ­brokerage Futu Holdings were among 27 US-listed mainland firms that met Hong Kong listing ­requirements, while at least 170 others may be at risk of exiting the US, Goldman Sachs said in a report last month.

“HKEX’s many listing reforms in recent years have enhanced the attractiveness of Hong Kong as a listing venue for new-economy and biotechnology companies, while the increased market turnover this year also helps attract these US-listed mainland firms,” said John Lee Chen-kwok, vice-chairman and co-head of Asia coverage for global banking at UBS.

In the first four months of this year, daily trading turnover in the city surged 144 per cent from a year earlier to HK$250.4 billion, thanks in part to a rally that came after artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek’s low-cost, high-performance large language models captured global attention.

Fifteen companies raised US$2.3 billion from IPOs in the first three months of 2025, according to data from the London Stock Exchange Group. That was the best quarterly performance since the second quarter of 2021 when proceeds totalled US$11.5 billion.

Chan Ka-keung, the chairman of digital lender WeLab Bank and Hong Kong’s former secretary for financial services and the treasury, said recent US regulations have helped drive start-ups to come to Hong Kong.

“Traditionally, most start-ups like to list in the US for its simple regulations, high valuation, and deep liquidity,” he said. “But the introduction of US regulations in recent years and the latest threat of delistings have reduced the attractiveness of the US market.”

“What Trump’s administration is doing is, in fact, good for Hong Kong’s IPO market.”

During Donald Trump’s first term as US president, he introduced the Holding Foreign Companies Accountable Act in December 2020. It required foreign companies to fall in line with audit inspection rules or face expulsion from US exchanges after three consecutive years of non-compliance.

This led to a wave of US-listed mainland firms, including JD.com and NetEase, to seek primary or secondary listings in Hong Kong. In 2022, the US and China reached an agreement on audit inspections in the city.

“The renewal of the threat of delisting has led many firms to reconsider listing in Hong Kong again so their shares can continue to be traded by international investors,” WeLab’s Chan said.

“I believe the US only uses the delisting threat as a tool of negotiation for trade deals, but the threat itself is already enough to help Hong Kong get more new listings.”

He also said the Chapter 18C listing rule has provided flexibility for start-ups to list, while the DeepSeek breakthrough attracted international investors to chase tech stocks in Hong Kong.

But David Chang, the founder and CEO of MindWorks, a venture capital firm focused on start-ups, said Hong Kong needs to speed up its approval process if it wants to attract more listings.

“Hong Kong’s listing process is still perceived as slower and more rigid compared to the US,” Chang said. “Additionally, valuation multiples in Hong Kong are generally lower, especially in the tech and consumer sectors, which can deter companies from relisting unless compelled by US delisting risks.”

Hong Kong’s current price-to-earnings ratio stood at 12.97 times, similar to Shanghai’s main board at 12.78, though it was much lower than 25.6 times for the Nasdaq.

But Chang said the recent tension has led many consumer and fintech companies to prepare for Hong Kong listings.

“Start-up founders still value the prestige and depth of US capital markets, but [they] now weigh geopolitical risks more seriously,” Chang said.

The proposals from Tsang, of Deloitte China, to the policy unit advising Chief Executive Lee spelled out how Hong Kong could persuade US-listed mainland companies to list in Hong Kong.

“It is important for the stock exchange to make it easy and quick for the many US-listed companies that have a secondary listing status in Hong Kong to upgrade to become primary listings,” Tsang said.

“For the other US-listed mainland firms that have not yet listed in Hong Kong, the HKEX should promise to approve their listing application within 30 days, the same timeline for mainland-listed companies seeking a listing in the city.”

The government should also consider making funds available to help mainland companies to delist from the US and relist in Hong Kong, Tsang said.

“If the government took the lead, it would encourage other sovereign funds in the Middle East or Asia to invest in these companies,” he said. “It would help them list with a better valuation.”

Hui, the financial services and the treasury secretary, said the city has worked hard to expand its sources of investment.

“With regard to new markets and new investors, we will continue to open up new foreign capital sources,” Hui said, adding that HKEX has added 20 overseas exchanges to its list of recognised partners, meaning the listed companies on these bourses could easily apply to come to Hong Kong.

“In addition, the chief executive of Hong Kong has led Hong Kong business delegations to visit the Middle East and Asean countries a few times, which promotes Hong Kong’s securities market and fundraising platform to overseas enterprises, Hui said.

Cusson Leung, chief investment officer of Hong Kong-based financial firm KGI, said the city has explored different potential investor pools, including other parts of Asia and the Middle East.

“The attraction of foreign funding to the local stock market is not just relying on the promotion of the local capital market,” he said. “The quality and prospects of the listed companies are the most important factors to attract capital.”

Market sentiment also plays a role, according to Alex Yan, managing director and head of investment banking at GF Securities (Hong Kong).

“Negative perceptions of Chinese equities, fuelled by economic slowdown fears or tariff threats, can suppress valuations in the US,” Yan said. “As a result, many firms are turning to Hong Kong, where the Stock Connect programme and growing mainland investor base offer a compelling alternative.”