TheChek News Flow

Rearming destroyers can take them out of combat for two months. The U.S. wants to fix that

A U.S. Navy destroyer can fire dozens of cruise missiles within minutes. Reloading the deadly warship back in port can take two months. In a war against China, that could be a fatal weakness.

To overcome the delay, Navy engineers pulled a 30-year-old crane out of storage, wired it up to computers, and used it to build a new prototype reloading system called the Transferrable Reload At-sea Method. TRAM, as it is known, promises to slash the time needed for missile reloading, potentially to just days.

“The ability to rearm at sea will be critical to any future conflict in the Pacific,” said Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro after a recent test of TRAM off the California coast, to which The Wall Street Journal was granted exclusive access.

Until recently, the Navy didn’t feel much need for speed in rearming its biggest missile-firing warships. They only occasionally launched large numbers of Tomahawk cruise missiles or other pricey projectiles.

Now, Pentagon strategists worry that if fighting broke out in the western Pacific—potentially 5,000 miles from a secure Navy base—destroyers, cruisers and other big warships would run out of vital ammunition within days, or maybe hours.

Seeking to plug that supply gap, Del Toro tasked commanders and engineers with finding ways to reload the fleet’s launch systems at remote ports or even on the high seas. Otherwise, U.S. ships might need to sail back to bases in Hawaii or California to do so—putting them out of action for weeks.

Slow reloading has been causing the Navy headaches in the Red Sea. Warships deployed there to defend cargo ships from Houthi rebels in Yemen must sail through the Suez Canal and to ports in Greece or Spain to reload, leaving the fight for extended periods.

“We should have developed this capability fully decades ago,” said retired Navy Admiral James Stavridis. “Again and again, after firing a significant load of Tomahawks…I had to pull my warships off the line to rearm,” said Stavridis, a former Supreme Allied Commander Europe of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The Navy only reloads the launchers from solid ground or in sheltered harbors because it is a delicate operation. Engineers in the 1990s proposed systems for reloading at sea, but available technology wasn’t precise enough to transfer missiles from a platform constantly in motion, such as a ship or floating dock.

The U.S.’s inability to restock missile launchers at sea is notable because America long ago performed engineering feats such as linking spacecraft orbiting the moon. The military routinely refuels military planes soaring above the clouds.

Engineers say that the ocean surface—while more familiar—presents uniquely vexing physics challenges due to currents, wind and the mix of air and water.

Now digital advances including 3-D printing, specialized radar and motion-detectors of the kind found in cellphones, have allowed the Navy to revisit the idea. Newfound urgency is speeding up work toward a solution.

“We are transforming the way we fight,” said Del Toro onboard the USNS Washington Chambers, a supply ship, during the TRAM test.

He watched as crews zip-lined a dummy missile container to the cruiser USS Chosin sailing alongside and as technicians operated the experimental crane to position the 20-foot-long box over the ship’s launch cells.

Del Toro, whose term ends with the Biden administration, wants equipment like TRAM included in ship modernization work planned over the coming years.

Today, the only U.S. warships that can be sustained indefinitely at sea and continue fighting are its 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and nine smaller amphibious assault ships, none of which carry vertical missile silos.

TRAM could increase that number roughly fivefold, taking the total to around 100 warships without building a single new hull.

Until then, the Navy is seeking new rearming sites at friendly ports. In September, U.S. sailors and logisticians for the first time reloaded a missile onboard the USS Dewey, a destroyer, at an allied naval base in Darwin, Australia.

At the Dewey’s deployment base in Yokosuka, Japan, missiles are reloaded from a barge that meets the destroyer at an anchorage in the harbor, but it is a sheltered area and the waters are calm. In a war, ports the U.S. uses in Japan and Guam could be targeted by Chinese missiles, prompting the Navy to seek havens further away.

“If conflict were to erupt, or if something were to happen, being able to go to various different locations around the Indo-Pacific, it makes it much faster for us to reload,” said Cmdr. Nicholas Maruca, the Dewey’s captain.

From the South China Sea, Darwin is a roughly 4½-day journey under normal sailing conditions, compared with a roughly three-week journey to the U.S. West Coast.

Reloading at sea could slash that downtime even further, but it would be a dicey operation. Missiles in their boxes, which resemble slender shipping containers, can weigh more than 6,000 lbs. They must slide smoothly into tightfitting launch cells because jostling could damage delicate guidance systems—or worse.

“These are supersonic rockets. There is a lot of fire and gas involved with this,” Maruca said. “If you drop the missile, that’s not good.”

For decades, the Navy has provisioned its ships on the high seas by sending basic supplies across cables strung between them. It routinely refuels ships using hoses supported in this way.

The connections require the ships to sail at nearly identical speeds, maintaining a constant distance. The equipment is designed so connections can be severed instantly if needed, such as if attacked.

Loading a warship with dozens of missiles using a crane on the supply ship would be dangerously slow. TRAM is designed to make the process faster and safer.

Creating the TRAM mechanism was still challenging. To start work, Navy experts early this year pulled the mothballed 1990s prototype out of storage, disassembled it and drafted digital plans to reverse-engineer it, with help from some archived drawings.

Putting the new plans in a computer simulation, they located the mechanism’s weakest points and added about 300 lbs. of steel reinforcement, said Ryan Hayleck, the project’s technical leader. The Chosin’s deck also needed reinforcing to handle the new load.

Technicians wired up both ships and the crane with sensors to understand how all the elements moved and what stresses they faced, all with the aim of refining designs. Navy Chief Engineer Rear Admiral Peter Small said the scads of data couldn’t have been collected through land-based tests and will guide the next steps.

“It’s safe to say that the TRAM of today is not your TRAM of yesteryear,” said Del Toro.

EU commissioner pitches ‘Europe first’ in response to Donald Trump

Stéphane Séjourné says his ‘biggest fear’ is for the bloc to become ‘collateral victim’ of global trade war

The EU’s new industry chief has called for a “Europe first” strategy for key business sectors, in a bid to prevent the bloc becoming collateral damage in a potential global trade war sparked by Donald Trump.

European Commission vice-president Stéphane Séjourné, a former French foreign minister and close ally of President Emmanuel Macron, told the Financial Times that Europe must act on the “offensive” to promote its strategic business interests and avoid being flooded by heavily subsidised imports from China.

“I fundamentally believe that Europe has everything to gain from being open to the world,” said Séjourné, who is in charge of the bloc’s industrial policy. But “when China says ‘Made in China’ or the US says ‘America First’, we must say: ‘Made in Europe’ or ‘Europe First’”.

The new commission has pledged to restore the bloc’s competitiveness over the next five years, a task that will become harder if US president-elect Donald Trump acts on his threats to slap sweeping tariffs on all imports, tear up trade deals and slash regulations for US businesses.

Séjourné said his “biggest fear” was that Europe would become “a collateral victim of a global trade war”.

“If all the world markets close, the only remaining open market cannot be the European market,” he said. “If the United States closes to Latin America, closes to India, closes to China, the European market cannot be the destination for all the overcapacities in the world, otherwise we will find ourselves in a situation of short-term economic crisis.”

Brussels must send a “firm message to the United States to tell them that, today, we see no reason to devalue our trade discussion and our trade exchanges”, he said. “The new administration must realise that . . . they also have nothing to gain from having a trade war.”

He brushed off criticism that the EU was pursuing a protectionist agenda.

“It’s not at all about protectionism because Europe really has no interest in a global trade war,” he added. “We have a strategic and technological interest to develop our own industries, to create employment and to create growth.”

Séjourné acknowledged the “negative music” about Europe’s economy, which has been hit in recent weeks by lay-offs from carmakers and steelmakers, and the collapse of Swedish electric battery manufacturer Northvolt, which was heralded as the continent’s green transition bellwether.

He said the commission would focus efforts on strategic sectors including steel, car manufacturing and aerospace, as well as clean technologies.

“It will be necessary to do so in a very targeted manner, on important strategic sectors. But you have to do it offensively and not defensively,” he said.

“Historic” industries must be protected because they provide “very important support” for the clean technologies critical to the green transition, Séjourné argued.

“In reality [steelmaking] is strategic because there are no wind turbines without steel. There is no car production without steel,” he said. “So, if we want to develop other industries, we need a steel industry.”

At the same time, clean technologies such as hydrogen and digital technologies could be “plugged in” to the most heavily polluting industries to cut emissions.

The new commission, which took office on December 1, would define the critical sectors in its first 100 days, he said. Another key policy effort would be to finally bring together the bloc’s capital markets to create a better investment environment — a long-standing ambition that has been thwarted by objections from member states.

“We want to give life to a European industrial policy and an economic doctrine, which we have not had so far,” he said. “We have so far had a juxtaposition of different measures that were sometimes not coherent with each other.”

In a major blow to Brussels’ existing industrial strategy, Northvolt, the EU’s best-funded start-up, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week, resulting in hundreds of millions of euros of losses for investors including Goldman Sachs and the EU itself, which guaranteed about €300mn worth of loans to the company.

Séjourné said he wanted to reassure investors that “Europe will not abandon the battery industry”.

“We must not have remorse for having established this sector, for having helped and subsidised them and above all when they go through a technological problem not let everything we did in the past be destroyed just by the first difficulty,” he added.

Europe’s centre right pushes to reverse 2035 ban on petrol cars

European People’s party says law aimed at boosting electric vehicle production is misfiring

The EU’s biggest political group is pushing for a reversal of an upcoming ban on combustion engines to stop the “unprecedented pressure” facing Europe’s auto industry.

The conservative European People’s party, in a position paper seen by the Financial Times, said the 2035 ban on the sale of new cars with combustion engines “should be reversed”. Traditional engines should continue to be allowed if they run on biofuels and other low-emission alternatives, it said.

The group that counts among its members European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen also said that fines for carmakers for exceeding new emissions limits, which are due to come in from next year, should be reconsidered.

The multibillion-euro fines were designed to provide an incentive for the production of electric vehicles, but given the slump in EV sales in Europe, this measure was now counterproductive, the EPP argued.

The group is pushing for a planned review of the 2035 law to be brought forward a year to 2025 in order to “correct” the ban and “provide the sector with legal certainty and planning security as soon as possible”.

The position paper could change slightly before it is adopted by the group in December.

Von der Leyen has maintained that Brussels will uphold the ban, which was enacted during her first term as part of a package of laws aimed at cutting carbon emissions in the EU to net zero by 2050.

This week, however, she announced that she would personally chair talks with stakeholders across the industry “to design solutions together as this industry goes through a deep and disruptive transition”.

Manfred Weber, the EPP leader and a German politician, met car chiefs this month amid growing concern about the state of the industry following Volkswagen and Ford announcing tens of thousands of job cuts.

All major EU-based carmakers have issued profit warnings, except for Renault, as they struggle to compete with cheap Chinese electric vehicles at the same time as transitioning their own production lines to EVs amid weakening European demand.

Acea, the car industry body, has called for “urgent relief measures” before the new emissions targets come into force in 2025.

Following European parliament elections in June, Weber has teamed up with groups across the political spectrum, including Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, which have questioned the bloc’s climate goals. Meloni has called the 2035 ban a “self-destructive” policy.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a Socialist, has also demanded fines be scrapped.

Industry ministers of seven EU countries led by Italy and the Czech Republic on Thursday echoed the EPP’s paper in calling for an earlier review of the 2035 ban and greater allowances for renewable fuels. They also requested better incentive schemes for consumers to buy electric vehicles.

The coming clash between Trump and Wall Street

A new Plaza accords

Optimists about Donald Trump’s trade agenda see the imposition of high tariffs as the opening gambit in a game of multiple moves.

In the simplest game, the higher tariffs trigger a negotiation that leads to mutual tariff reductions. This is the vision that Kevin Hassett, recently appointed to lead the National Economic Council, laid out in an interview with Unhedged. Others see a more ambitious game, culminating in the reconfiguration of global trade and capital flows. Treasury-Secretary-to-be Scott Bessent, in an interview with the FT, described his strength as “understanding how complex systems either accelerate or break down” and said that “we are in the midst of a reordering on international trade and relationships, and I’d like to be a part of that.” 

What might the bigger game look like, and how might it influence markets? I believe if Bessent’s “reordering” takes place, markets could be in for a shock. 

My colleague Alan Beattie recently made the case that it is impossible to read a coherent economic agenda off of Trump’s economic appointments:

It is very unclear how [tariffs] might be employed, or for what end, or what other economic and financial tools might also be deployed, or whom [Trump] will be listening to at any given time. This week is a warning to anyone who thinks they have the Trump administration all figured out. They do not.

I agree with this. It is consistent with what we saw in Trump’s first term. In contrast to the meaningful changes Trump I made in tax policy, the administration’s trade policy was scattershot and resulted mainly in a cosmetic rerouting of trade that left global relationships and the US current account deficit unchanged. That said, the Trump II team may have a different character, and Bessent may amass enough capital in the White House to try something big. 

One vision of that something was articulated in the FT by the economist Shahin Vallée. He sees tariffs drawing the countries that run trade surpluses with the US into a “new plaza accords”,

an international grand bargain in the form of a co-ordinated and gradual depreciation of the dollar in exchange for a reduction in American tariffs. This would not only force China to accept more currency flexibility but would also help other countries to contribute more meaningfully to global rebalancing by boosting domestic demand.

In return, the US would commit to reducing tariffs and to some degree of fiscal consolidation. This would stabilise the dollar and promote a rebalancing of the world economy conducive to better allocation of global investments and savings.

My question on reading this was: is the dollar even overvalued? I put this to Vallée, and he agreed that it isn’t. But the imposition of tariffs will make it so. 

Vallée sees the run-up to the grand bargain as having three phases. The current honeymoon phase is characterised by optimism about tax cuts to come, and lack of clarity about what tariffs we will get and what they will mean. The second phase is unpleasant: tariffs get real, which weighs on sentiment and pushes the dollar higher. Countermeasures from Europe, Canada and Mexico bite. The Renminbi weakens. The dollar rises and global financial conditions tighten. Many emerging markets fall into distress. “This phase needs to be painful,” Vallée says. “Trump needs to hate it.” Tax cuts and softer monetary policy (perhaps delivered by a new Fed chair or shadow Fed chair) will only do so much to reduce the pain. 

Perhaps 18 months into the new administration, global discomfort brings the world to the negotiating table, seeking a deal in which the dollar weakens, the US spends less, primarily by cutting its budget deficit, while the rest of the world — particularly China, Germany, and Japan — spends more. 

There are two obvious objections. Why would the Chinese come along with such a deal after the long deflationary winter of the Japanese economy in the decades following the 1985 Plaza accords? Vallée does not see this as fatal:

The Chinese are not in the same position today as the Japanese were in the mid-90s, when Japan was booming, and the accords imploded the Japanese real estate bubble. The Chinese are already in deflation, and they need a rebalancing towards domestic demand. I can see why the Chinese would resist it, and why an appreciating Renminbi would increase deflationary forces. But if [the bargain] forces them to deal with domestic imbalances, strengthening the social safety net and increase consumption, I don’t think that a deal necessarily leads to profound deflationary shock in China

Michael Pettis, a Beijing-based economist who also believes global imbalances are a problem requiring a structural solution, thinks that “deficit countries have most of the cards”; if they impose tariffs and reduce their deficits, there is little the surplus countries can do. 

The other objection is that, for the US, reducing its trade deficit means reducing consumption (public, private or both) and that it lacks the will to do so. The idea that the adjustment can be made entirely through the elimination of wasteful government spending is of course a fantasy. At the very least, cuts in services that are politically popular would be required. Households will have to adjust, too. 

Pettis cautions that we should not see this in zero-sum terms. “We don’t want consumption in the deficit countries to go down, we want the consumption share of GDP to go down — we want production to go up.”

Assuming resistance to a deal can be overcome, what would a new plaza accord mean for US assets? What would happen in Vallee’s second phase — the pain phase — is hard to predict. Tariffs could drive cost inflation and reduce corporate profits, a strong dollar would reduce the value of revenue earned abroad, global demand would suffer, and domestic producers might struggle to increase production. But all of this may be less important than the flight to safety that global financial stress would create, which would support both Treasuries and US stocks. In a turbulent moment, the US will remain very attractive.

But the global rebalancing that follows a global deal would be bad for US assets. The reason for this is that the US trade deficit that any deal would aim to reduce corresponds, on the other side of the ledger, to big flows of capital into the US from abroad. These flows help explain the extraordinary performance and valuation of US risk assets, relative to the rest of the world, since the great financial crisis. To put it another way, the current global regime creates excess savings abroad which flow to US capital markets, which are open and deep, driving prices higher. The whole point of a deal would be to eliminate the imbalances that generate these excess savings. A new Plaza accord, while bringing benefits to the real economy, is very likely to hurt Wall Street. 

It is hard to say how the Trump administration would respond to this trade-off. “The real question is, who drives policy? Is it Wall Street, or the people in the administration who want to revive the US economy?” asks Pettis. Facing a hostile market, Trump might retreat from structural reform, stick with cosmetic bilateral tariffs, and focus on other areas of policy. Or, in full populist mode, he might embrace the enmity of Wall Street, as Franklin Roosevelt did. I have no idea which is more likely.

Australian gold miners strike $3.2bn takeover deal

Northern Star to acquire rival De Grey in all-share transaction as gold price surge continues to drive consolidation

Two of Australia’s largest gold miners have agreed a A$5bn ($3.2bn) takeover deal as the booming price for the commodity continues to drive consolidation in the sector. 

Northern Star Resources, which operates the huge Super Pit gold mine near Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, has agreed to take over rival De Grey Mining in an all-share deal pitched at a 37 per cent premium to the smaller company’s share price. De Grey shareholders would hold 20 per cent of the combined company.

It is the latest transaction in the global gold sector as producers take advantage of record prices to acquire smaller rivals.

US company Newmont acquired Australia’s largest player Newcrest for $19bn last year. In August Gold Fields paid $1.6bn for Canada’s Osisko Mining, pitched at a similar premium to the Northern Star-De Grey deal, and AngloGold Ashanti agreed to buy UK-listed Centamin for £1.9bn in September.

Northern Star shares dropped 5 per cent on the takeover news while De Grey’s stock surged 28 per cent. 

The acquisition, which the De Grey board has recommended, will give Northern Star control over the promising Hemi prospect in the Pilbara, the iron ore-rich region in northern Western Australia, which is expected to generate more than 500,000 ounces of gold a year in its first decade of operation. 

Stuart Tonkin, Northern Star’s chief executive, said Hemi was a high-quality, long-life asset in a low-risk jurisdiction. “It was an important one to own and keep in Australian hands. It’s in an elite, scarce club,” he said. 

He added that the combination with De Grey would strengthen Northern Star’s position as a top 10 global gold producer and, given Hemi’s potential, meant it would have two of the largest gold mines under its wing. 

His company, now one of Australia’s largest listed gold miners, has earned a reputation for improving gold mining assets that had fallen out of favour with larger players.

The Super Pit — officially the Fimiston Open Pit — is 3.5km long, 1.5km wide and 600 metres deep. The mine was previously jointly owned by Newmont and Barrick Gold. Northern Star acquired Newmont’s stake in 2019 and then struck a A$16bn merger with Saracen, which had acquired the Barrick stake, in 2021. This brought the giant deposit under single ownership for the first time in its near 130-year history. 

Northern Star secured a A$1.5bn upgrade to its Kalgoorlie operations last year that will double processing capacity when completed in 2026. The company had been tipped to explore acquisition opportunities as a result of the booming gold price this year. 

Analysts said the deal made strategic sense in a consolidating market and would potentially boost Northern Star’s output to 2.5mn ounces a year by the end of the decade, making it one of the world’s largest producers. 

JPMorgan said in a note: “The acquisition is quite different to Northern Star’s historic strategy of acquiring older assets in production and recapitalising. However, with major projects like the (Kalgoorlie) expansion progressing well . . . we have limited concerns on delivery.”

UK start-up raises fresh capital for race in credit markets data

Founder of London-based 9fin predicts winning research company could generate $1bn a year in revenue

9fin, a fast-growing information provider to corporate credit investors, has raised $50mn in financing as it battles for dominance in the market for debt research.

Highland Europe, a prominent growth capital investor, is to lead the 9fin series B round that is to be formally announced on Monday. The parties did not disclose the implied 9fin valuation but the Financial Times had previously reported that the London-based fintech was to be valued at roughly $500mn on current annual recurring revenue of about $25mn.

Steven Hunter, who co-founded 9fin in 2016 and now serves as chief executive, told the FT he believed that there would soon be a data services company serving the debt market which would generate $1bn in revenue annually.

“Someone can build something in the same ballpark as a FactSet, Morningstar, or Refinitiv or Bloomberg type of scale. There is at least a billion-dollar revenue business to be built in this space,” Hunter said in an interview.

Hunter, 32, began his career as a debt markets investment banker at JPMorgan in the UK and later became a credit investor. He said he quickly discovered that there was insufficient data on debt issuers who were often privately held or small.

“I complained to anyone who would listen about how archaic the technology was in my day and complain about how dreadful the data was,” he said.

Hunter founded the company with Huss El-Sheikh, a friend and university classmate who at the time worked in technology at Deutsche Bank. While 9fin’s roots are in traditional high-yield and distressed debt, the steady march of capital intermediation away from banks and towards asset managers has created new asset classes in private credit and asset-backed lending.

“People are [increasingly] looking for a debtlike return for a pool of capital,” Hunter said, adding that the largest incumbent data providers were still focused on stock market investors.

“I think about where clients make money, what are the most important parts of financial markets in the world, it’s debt,” he said.

9fin has nearly 250 employees, the majority in London and Belfast, and is expected to turn cash flow positive next year. The money from Highland Europe, a well-known software venture capital group, will be focused on expanding engineering and technology operations in the US, where its business is most quickly growing. Highland’s co-founder Fergal Mullen will join the board of 9fin, which has now raised nearly $90mn in funding since its inception.

KKR, Carlyle and Mubadala were among the other parties that had expressed interest during the sales process.

Like its direct competitors, including Reorg, Fitch and Debtwire, 9fin employs journalists as well as lawyers and financial analysts to break news and provide analysis on credit deals and market trends. Hunter said 9fin was formed primarily as a technology firm that would create better tools for collecting and processing vast amounts of market data.

Debt information providers often sell their products for more than $100,000 a year per user, setting up a fight among the top players to become the industry standard.

“It’s not winner takes all but it is winner takes most,” said Hunter.

He contended that the steep cost of the data services should be easily justifiable.

“Think about how much a deal fee you make on a transaction. Do you think 9fin will help you win one more deal in the next decade? If the answer to that question is yes, the return on investment versus a licence cost is just crazy,” he said.

Advent-backed Polish parcel locker group bets on UK

InPost chief Rafał Brzoska says company could spend more than €1bn on acquisitions

InPost, a Polish parcel locker company backed by buyout firm Advent International, is betting on booming demand for out-of-home deliveries in the UK to drive its European expansion.

Rafał Brzoska, founder and chief executive of InPost, said the company could spend more than €1bn on acquisitions, though most of the growth would be organic. It is aiming to extend its network from nine countries to as many as 15 next year.

Brzoska said growth in out-of-home deliveries in Britain, where his ambitions will put him in competition with Czech billionaire investor Daniel Křetínský who bought Royal Mail in May, was faster than what he had experienced in Poland, where he started InPost in 2006.

“First-mover advantage is the key, but secondly the adoption [rate] among the [UK] clients is growing much faster than we expected and much faster than historically in Poland,” Brzoska said in an interview.

InPost’s expansion, backed by Advent after the private equity group bought a majority stake from Brzoska in 2017, has made its network of automated lockers the biggest in Europe. It has 25,000 so-called automatic parcel machines (APMs) in its home market.

In the UK, where InPost spent £60mn this year to take control of logistics company Menzies, it already has 8,600 APMs and is installing 100 more every week. Brzoska said he planned to increase that rate soon.

Dotted around towns and cities, APMs allow customers to pick up purchases from lockers when it suits them, rather than having to wait for a courier to deliver them to their address.

Courier companies reduce their costs, which they can pass on to customers, by delivering to dedicated points rather than individual homes. That also cuts the carbon intensity of their operations with fewer vehicles on the road.

InPost has a market valuation of €8.3bn, following a €2.8bn initial public offering in 2021. Advent now holds 11 per cent while Brzoska owns 12.5 per cent. Czech investment firm PPF Group has almost 29 per cent of the company, after buying part of Advent’s stake.

The company reported a 33 per cent rise in third-quarter earnings to almost €200mn, after growing the number of parcels delivered by 25 per cent more compared with the same period a year earlier.

Brzoska, 47, said he was not worried about competition in the UK from Křetínský, whom he described as “a very talented entrepreneur”, and others because “the size of the market and the total opportunity is so huge”.

Only about a tenth of parcels get collected outside customers’ homes in the UK, compared with 40 per cent in France and 65 per cent in Poland, he said.

InPost is now also negotiating with local partners to extend its cross-border deliveries to Germany, Switzerland and Austria, as well as separately to Nordic countries Finland, Sweden and Norway.

If the joint venture talks are successful, InPost will add either three or all six of the target countries to its network as early as the first quarter of 2025. A larger cross-border network will also help InPost compete against established courier companies such as DHL, UPS and FedEx.

“The old-fashioned door-to-door delivery system is not sustainable,” Brzoska said, adding that city authorities were promoting APMs over courier vans to reduce traffic congestion and pollution.

InPost recently launched a service for travellers to send luggage before boarding flights for the equivalent of €6.7 for a 25kg suitcase delivered from Poland to Spain, undercutting what many airlines charge.

The potential to make money from transporting travellers’ bags was highlighted last month when Spain fined some low-cost airlines for “abusive” practices, including extra costs for hand luggage.

But Brzoska conceded that most passengers would still prefer to travel with their bags even if it was the more expensive option.

Lumina raises funds to bypass Hollywood studios and back actor-led projects

Lumina, a film studio and venture capital group founded by producer and entrepreneur Thomas Benski, has raised tens of millions in cash from wealthy investors such as Tetra Pak heir Magnus Rausing and the Dorfman family.

Lumina is developing a new entertainment model designed to bypass major studios and put actors in control of their own intellectual property. The business will invest in production companies fronted and co-owned by global stars such as French actor Omar Sy, alongside a film financing fund and production arm.

A separate venture capital fund will acquire intellectual property in the film sector and finance productions.

The first business Lumina is backing is Carrousel Studio, Sy’s new production house. The actor told the Financial Times that Lumina offered “artists like us the resources and expertise to go out and realise our ambitions at a time when talent is too often not at the table to benefit from a projects’ long-term success”.

A separate film production business, called Magna Studios, led by Marisa Clifford and Davud Karbassioun, will focus on shows such as scripted drama and documentaries. Lumina has closed a deal to make shows with Yann Demange’s Wayward Films, which produced the hit show Top Boy.

Another arm will focus on kids’ entertainment, including investing in and developing Strike, a group that produces the football show Jamie Johnson. A separate consumer-focused venture investments fund has also been raised, with initial investments in luxury brand Métier and tech group DAACI.

Benski previously founded Pulse, a TV and film studio that had revenues of more than $150mn by the time he left in 2021, with projects including Gangs of London, Beastie Boys Story and The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann.

Benski said that Lumina wanted to disrupt the traditional Hollywood model with a shift from “service to ownership . . . for talent to go from earning fees to actually owning their work”.

He added that the new business was designed to “bypass” the traditional studio model, which comes with heavy costs and infrastructure, outsourcing much of the work and instead “putting capital, operations and strategic support around talent to help them own their work creatively and financially”. 

The various businesses would work together where they could, he said, “looking at everything we do a little bit more like a franchise or brand, rather than just servicing the needs of broadcasters”.

The first round of funding includes Magnus Rausing’s BFK, Charles Dorfman’s Dorfman Media Holdings and SVS Holdings, among investors.

Lumina aims to be self-financing through its projects — using the money raised as an M&A war chest — with a projected $55mn in revenue in the first year, growing to $100mn in the second year.

“The current media landscape is in flux, and we believe this is the ideal time to build future facing companies,” said Benski. “Our thesis is that there is a big opportunity to decouple the IP creation process by building studios and production companies around major talent.”

He said the group was already planning to produce three to four TV shows, and five movies next year with partners including Netflix and the BBC.

Magnus Rausing, whose family own the Tetra Pak empire and who is a venture capital investor through investment company Mahr Projects, said Lumina would pioneer “a new approach that both supports talent to create and own valuable IP while driving innovation across its companies — creatively, strategically and technologically”. 

Rausing said: “I was looking for a vehicle to build a media and entertainment footprint and Lumina is absolutely the right platform given its inventive model.”

Charles Dorfman, chief executive of Dorfman Media Holdings, said he would be a strategic partner “seeking to add value beyond our investment”.

Benski said that there were advantages to being based in Europe rather than the US — such as cheaper production costs, local subsidies and tax breaks. 

There would be further M&A, he added. “We’re founder friendly, we have good capital, we have a good record. I think we become quite an attractive proposition for the right kind of companies.”

The Port of New York and New Jersey is seeking a greater share in cargo company profits, and more investment from tenants

The East Coast’s busiest port is flexing its muscle as it tries to grab a bigger share of the enormous profits and multibillion-dollar land deals flowing through the shipping industry.

The Port of New York and New Jersey is demanding a slice of transactions when terminals are bought and sold and looking for a larger piece of the revenues for business moving across its docks. It is also requiring cargo-handling tenants to spend more of their own money upgrading infrastructure.

The port’s more aggressive approach is taking shape as ocean carriers report booming profits and multinational companies spend billions of dollars to acquire prized space at major ports. France-based CMA CGM last year bought two terminals at the Port of New York and New Jersey for $2.8 billion, one of the largest in recent deals that amount to a land rush at global gateways.

The New York-New Jersey port is tied into multidecade leases, so it is looking to terminal sales and lease renewals to tap in to more of the revenues from the large volumes of goods moving through maritime trade.

Like other seaports around the world, the port raises revenue through its leasing agreements with various private terminal operators. The leases provide a steady source of revenue, but the port doesn’t reap the gains when cargo volumes surge.

The value of cargo facilities has grown as global trade has expanded and big terminal operators have sought to consolidate ownership of container terminals. Big shipping lines including CMA CGM, Denmark’s A.P. Moller-Maersk and Switzerland-based Mediterranean Shipping are investing in more port facilities to gain greater control of goods moving through their transportation networks.

Leases at the New York-New Jersey port’s two largest terminals will be expiring over the next several years, including that of Maher Terminals, the port’s most valuable facility. Maher’s current lease holder, Australia-based infrastructure fund giant Macquarie Asset Management, is negotiating an extension of its agreement so that it can upgrade the terminal or sell it.

Shipping industry officials say Maher’s potential sale, which could come as early as next year, is attracting interest from some of the world’s largest ocean carriers, infrastructure funds and terminal operators. The property would fetch several billion dollars in a sale, observers say.

“It’s the largest terminal in the largest port on the East Coast and a gateway to one of the largest consumer markets in the world,” said Matthew Leech, chief executive of Ports America, an operator of one of the port’s other terminals.

The port is also negotiating with APM Terminals, a Maersk subsidiary, which operates a terminal at Elizabeth, N.J., according to a person familiar with the matter. Its lease expires at the end of 2029.

Representatives for Maersk and for the public agency that runs the port declined to comment.

Cargo-handling terminals are in high demand as terminal operators and infrastructure funds pursue prize assets and as ocean carriers spend billions of dollars to snap up terminals and take greater control of landside operations for their vessels.

In 2022, CMA CGM bought out a partner’s 90% stake in Fenix Marine Services, one of the largest terminals at the Port of Los Angeles with an enterprise value of $2.3 billion. China’s Cosco Shipping Ports has expanded its terminal operations around the world in concert with expansion by state-owned Cosco Shipping Lines, this year taking stakes in terminals at Thailand’s busiest port and opening a $3.5 billion megaport in Peru.

The Port of New York and New Jersey is the primary gateway for imports to the northeastern U.S. The gateway handled the equivalent of almost 6.6 million containers in the first nine months of this year, 13.8% more than in the same period in 2023.

Striking dockworkers shut down the port for three days in October as part of a wider walkout by unionized longshore workers at ports from Maine to Texas. Importers and exporters fear dockworkers could walk out again if a lasting deal isn’t reached before a Jan. 15 deadline.

The port’s more muscular terminal strategy was evident in the concessions it wrung from the sale last year of the two terminals to CMA CGM.

The carrier paid Canada-based Global Container Terminals $2.8 billion for the facilities in New Jersey and Staten Island, according to CMA CGM financial documents. As part of the terminal deal, the port received a fee of $20 million, according to a person familiar with the transaction.

CMA CGM agreed to pay higher rents based on container throughput and to pay a share in container storage fees over a baseline amount. It also agreed to invest $600 million in dockside infrastructure, such as wharf and berth repairs.

Shipping industry officials say the port’s ambitions have swelled since the Covid pandemic, when a surge in demand for ocean shipping delivered enormous profits to the maritime industry.

Ocean carriers collectively earned more than $400 billion in the 2021 to 2022 period, according to marine consulting firm Sea-Intelligence, roughly 10 times their combined operating profit over the prior decade. After falling back last year, ocean carrier profits in the most recent quarter totaled just over $17 billion, Sea-Intelligence says, a sevenfold increase from the same period last year.

World’s fourth-largest carmaker has suffered a sharp decline in profits this year

Stellantis chief executive Carlos Tavares has resigned following a sharp decline in financial performance at the world’s fourth-largest carmaker, marking an abrupt exit for one of the automotive industry’s most high-profile leaders.

In a statement on Sunday, Stellantis, which owns the Peugeot, Fiat and Jeep brands, said the company’s board accepted the resignation of Tavares, without clarifying the reason why he had stepped down. 

In September, Stellantis had launched a search for a successor to Tavares, but he had been expected to complete his term as chief executive through until early 2026.

Tavares joined France’s Peugeot owner PSA in 2014, saved it from near insolvency, and then helped forge Stellantis by buying Germany-based Opel from General Motors in 2017. A €50bn merger with Fiat-Chrysler followed in 2021.

John Elkann, Stellantis’ chair, said “our thanks goes to Carlos for his years of dedicated service and the role he has played in the creation of Stellantis”.

The company said the process to appoint a new chief executive would be concluded by the first half of 2025. Until then, a new interim executive committee led by Elkann will be formed.

People familiar with Tavares’ departure said there were increasing tensions between him and other Stellantis board members on how to put the company back on track following a steep decline in reported profits in 2024 due to slumping sales in the US and Europe.

“He was focusing on the short term rather than the group’s longer term and managed to anger everybody in the process,” said one person familiar with conversations among the board members. 

A second person with knowledge of the deliberations added: “There was a sense that Carlos was moving too fast to retrieve his reputation at the risk of creating problems in the future.”

Stellantis’ falling profits this year represented a stark reversal of fortunes for the company, which had built a strong balance sheet through sweeping cost cuts. 

Another person briefed on Tavares’ resignation said the situation inside Stellantis and with the company’s stakeholders, including suppliers and dealers in the US, had become strained.

Disgruntled factory workers in Italy and the US had threatened strikes following production cuts.

Tavares did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Stellantis on Sunday confirmed its 2024 financial guidance, including its target for an adjusted operating profit margin of 5.5 per cent to 7 per cent.

In July Tavares had brushed off concerns about Stellantis’ performance, describing the slump in sales as a “bump in the road” as he vowed to “fix” the problems. 

In October he oversaw a management shake up at the company’s brands, including Jeep, Maserati and Alfa Romeo. The changes were interpreted by analysts as a sign Tavares was not planning to step down before the end of his term. 

At the time he also clashed with the Italian government over electric vehicle subsidies, as he threatened to move some Stellantis jobs at its Italian factories overseas.

Tavares was grilled by angry Italian lawmakers, and his response blaming the tough regulatory environment was taken as lacking in “humility”, said one person familiar with the matter.

Tavares’ departure comes just days after Stellantis announced it was suspending production of the Fiat 500 EV and two Maserati models at its historic Mirafiori plant in Turin during December due to weak demand.

Last week Stellantis blamed the UK’s electric vehicle sales rules as it announced plans to shut its van factory in Luton, putting about 1,100 jobs at risk.