TheChek News Flow

By nominating Chris Wright, Trump is elevating an ally of his oil donors, many of whom question climate change science

Donald Trump rewarded the tycoons behind the shale boom, among his most ardent supporters, with the selection Saturday of Chris Wright as his nominee for Energy Secretary.

Wright was front-and-center for the fracking revolution that reshaped the country as a band of scrappy wildcatters that reinvigorated U.S. oil and gas production to record heights. His $2.8 billion company, Liberty Energy, pumps water and sand underground to frack customers’ wells.

Wright’s selection elevates a pugnacious branch of the oil-and-gas industry that is skeptical of climate-change science and mostly hasn’t pledged to build out low-carbon energy businesses, unlike giants Exxon Mobil and Chevron.

In recent years, the outspoken and combative chief executive emerged as an oil-and gas champion, as Wright touted the benefits of fossil fuels to improve the wealth, health and life opportunities of most of the world population. He has said renewable energy can’t replace many of the functions fulfilled by hydrocarbons.

After the clothing brand North Face declined to sell jackets to an oil-and-gas company with that firm’s logo added to them, Wright rented billboards in and around Denver that said, “That North Face Puffer looks great on you. And it was made from fossil fuels.”

Liberty published a 180-page report in which Wright criticizes what he considers to be “a myopic focus on climate change and climate politics.” Those views have made him a darling among his peers and on the conservative speaking circuit.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal before the election, Wright denounced the “hyper-politicization of energy” and singled out Democrats, saying “they called a war on climate change, making it hard to produce oil and gas.”

If confirmed as the head of the Energy Department, Wright, a Washington outsider now based in Denver, will oversee a sprawling agency that safeguards the country’s nuclear arsenal and directs federal research on energy technologies.

Trump said that in addition to heading the Energy Department, Wright would be a member of his newly formed National Energy Council. North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, another staunch Trump supporter hailing from a shale state, was nominated to lead the Interior Department last week and will chair the council.

“Chris was one of the pioneers who helped launch the American Shale Revolution that fueled American Energy Independence,” Trump said Saturday.

Wright’s ascension culminates a push by oil wildcatters, who run smaller and often privately held companies, into Trump’s political ranks. Billionaire oilmen donated millions to the president-elect’s campaign, and were among his most prolific backers in any industry. Wright and his wife together contributed more than $540,000 to Trump’s re-election effort.

These oil donors mostly share Trump’s skepticism about the scientific consensus showing mankind’s contribution to climate change. They are pushing for the incoming administration to dial back enforcement of environmental rules they say are too onerous for their businesses

Many of these executives say they are against policies that U.S. energy companies such as Exxon, Chevron and Occidental Petroleum support. They mostly oppose their bigger competitors’ advocacy for tax credits for capturing carbon and other emission-curbing technology, as well as methane regulations they say could hamper oil and gas production.

Last week, Exxon CEO Darren Woods said in an interview that Trump should keep the U.S. in the Paris climate agreement, accentuating policy differences between the major oil companies and Trump. The president-elect will almost certainly pull the U.S. from the accords for a second time.

The Energy Department was a linchpin of President Biden’s strategy to address climate change, notably its Loan Programs Office, which has financed businesses important to the country’s energy transition. Biden’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, multiplied the office’s lending capacity by 10-fold. Trump has said he would seek to rescind unspent funds provided by the law.

Wright caught Trump’s attention at an April meeting of oil bosses at Mar-a-Lago. After Wright presented his views, Trump said the executive could become his energy secretary, the Journal previously reported.

Wright has a powerful ally in Harold Hamm, the billionaire founder of Continental Resources and one of Trump’s most influential oil backers. Hamm is advising Trump’s transition team on energy personnel and policy, according to people familiar with the matter. He publicly encouraged Trump to make Wright his pick.

About two years ago, Hamm asked Wright to join his lobbying group, the Domestic Energy Producers Alliance, which has frequently questioned climate science. Wright joined the lobby, where he serves as a director.

“We think a lot alike on the climate issues and the reality of fossil fuels, oil and gas, in our lives,” said Jerry Simmons, CEO of the group.

While the energy department doesn’t regulate fossil-fuel production, one of its prerogatives is approving most exports of liquefied natural gas. Oil and gas donors have pressed Trump to lift a pause Biden declared on new LNG exports earlier this year, a move Wright is almost certain to implement.

Wright is a self-described nerd who studied engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, before founding Liberty in 2011. He has frequently appeared on cable news programs, defending the oil industry against perceived enemies.

“He’ll be a strong advocate for independent producers and the perspective of the traditional oil patch,” said Thomas Pyle, president of the industry trade group American Energy Alliance, who was on Trump’s energy transition team in 2016. “That’s his home, that’s where he’s from.”

In a video uploaded to LinkedIn last year, Wright said he believes that “there is no climate crisis, and we’re not in the midst of an energy transition either.”

When LinkedIn took down the 12-minute video, Wright criticized the company on an earnings call with investors, saying he found it “alarming that a Microsoft-owned business is actively working to protect a false and destructive meme about energy and climate.”

Wright appealed the decision, and LinkedIn eventually informed him that it had concluded that his post didn’t actually go against its policies. It restored the video.

The rise of innovative traders increases competition for banks — and work for authorities

Trillions of dollars of financial securities change hands every day. A few decades back, exchanges took place in raucous trading pits where dealers would bellow out prices to match buyers and sellers. Then the banks went electronic. Today, the task of market-making has evolved into a competitive and highly lucrative computerised sport beyond the banking sector, where wits, speed and technology are helping players gain an edge. And as the Financial Times’ New titans of Wall Street series has outlined, a handful of innovators have mastered it, leaving the biggest names in banking in the dust.

Independent trading firms, including Citadel Securities, Jane Street, Susquehanna International Group, XTX Markets and DRW, have taken advantage of electronic transactions and algorithms to trade and make markets in an array of assets at mind-boggling speeds. These high-frequency traders have grabbed market share from less nimble investment banks, which prioritised big money deals over low-margin trades. For measure, Citadel Securities handles almost a quarter of all US stock trades. Last year, Jane Street traded options with a notional value of $32tn.

Many of the upstarts were founded around the turn of the millennium by seasoned dealers, and grew to prominence in the aftermath of the financial crisis. They are eclectic, secretive — and extremely rich. Jane Street’s love of puzzles led to a specialisation in complex assets like exchange traded funds. Susquehanna has built a niche in options, and XTX has conquered foreign exchange, in part by using machine learning to scan trillions of market data points. Citadel Securities’ business model focuses on combing data from order flow to make its prices more competitive, while DRW’s revenue comes predominantly from directional bets, rather than market-making.

Their unique algorithms and trading strategies are designed by sophisticated coders, mathematicians and engineers, who are in turn rewarded with handsome salaries. The annual base salary (excluding bonuses) for interns at Jane Street can exceed that of the US Federal Reserve chair and the British prime minister. 

The firms’ success is proof of the benefits of creative destruction. As Wall Street’s largest lenders prioritised big money quotes, and were hemmed in by post-financial crisis regulatory requirements, these traders stepped into the low-margin, high-volume trading game with technological innovation. Investing is now significantly cheaper; the big banks often charged hefty transaction fees. Global liquidity across assets is also now more abundant, helping to bolster retail and wholesale capital markets. The added competition pushes banks to innovate and invest in technology, too.

Some analysts reckon the new masters of trading are also better stewards of the market than banks. As privately owned firms, losses are felt by founders and employees, driving a culture of caution. For instance, Jane Street says it maintains an extra “liquidity buffer” of about 15 per cent of its trading capital, to help it hold on to positions even in chaotic markets.

But as trading firms grow, so does their significance to the financial system. The 2010 “flash crash” in US equities and 2014 “flash rally” in Treasuries — which were exacerbated by high-frequency trading — underscored the risks of more money flowing through opaque and less-regulated non-bank financial institutions. Since then there have been myriad lower-key, but still unnerving, glitches.

If the new breed of traders’ algorithms trips up, market confidence and liquidity will suffer. Today, banks and non-bank trading firms operate in an ever more complex web where they are often clients, counterparties, and competitors. Better monitoring of Wall Street’s new titans is now both logical, and essential.

Liberty Energy CEO set to lead administration’s drive to loosen restrictions on the fossil fuel industry

Donald Trump has nominated shale boss Chris Wright as energy secretary, a role that would put the oilman at the heart of the administration’s drive to loosen restrictions on the fossil fuel industry.

The Financial Times reported on Friday that Wright, the chief executive of oilfield services group Liberty Energy, was the most likely candidate for the job.

Wright “has been a leading technologist and entrepreneur in Energy,” Trump said in a statement. As energy secretary, he “will be a key leader, driving innovation, cutting red tape, and ushering in a new ‘Golden Age of American Prosperity and Global Peace.’”

Trump also appointed Wright to a new “Council of National Energy,” to be headed by former North Dakota governor Doug Burgum, which will co-ordinate an overhaul of energy policy across government agencies. 

The president-elect, who has launched an effort to cut government spending helmed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, reiterated his call to slash regulation.

“This Council will oversee the path to U.S. ENERGY DOMINANCE by cutting red tape, enhancing private sector investments across all sectors of the Economy, and by focusing on INNOVATION over long-standing, but totally unnecessary, regulation,” Trump said.

Wright said in a statement on X that his focus would be on “making American energy more affordable, reliable, and secure”.

“Energy is the lifeblood that makes everything in life possible,” he posted.

Wright’s proposed appointment marks another big win for the US oil industry, which supported his candidacy, and gives him a key role in enacting the president-elect’s plans to increase liquefied natural gas exports.

Trump vowed on the campaign trail to undo President Joe Biden’s pause on LNG export permits on “day one” of his administration, a task that would fall to his new energy secretary.

Senator John Barrasso, the most senior Republican on the Senate’s Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, said Wright would “help ensure America remains committed to an all-of-the-above energy policy that puts American families first”.

Harold Hamm, founder of Continental Resources and Trump’s most prominent industry backer, touted Wright as a candidate for the role, describing him as “very, very good on energy”.

“He knows it really well,” Hamm told the Financial Times in an interview in October.

Wright’s nomination will probably face staunch opposition from environmentalists, however.

“Picking someone like Chris Wright is a clear sign that Trump wants to turn the US into a pariah petrostate,” Jean Su, director of the Centre for Biological Diversity’s energy justice programme, said after the announcement.

The oil boss courted controversy last year when he lashed out at the use of terms including “climate crisis”, “clean energy” and “carbon pollution”.

“There is no climate crisis and we are not in the midst of an energy transition either,” he said in a video posted to LinkedIn. He later denied he was “fight[ing] climate science”.

Ray Washburne, chair of petrol station chain Sunoco, and Paul Dabbar, a tech executive who is leading Trump’s transition team for energy roles, were also in the mix for the energy secretary job, according to people familiar with the Trump transition team’s thinking.

Washburne served as president of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation in Trump’s first administration and previously sat on the board of Energy Transfer, a pipeline company led by Trump donor Kelcy Warren.

Dabbar also served in the previous Trump administration, as under-secretary for science in the energy department.

Wright is the latest addition to Trump’s administration with ties to the fossil fuels industry after Burgum was appointed Trump’s energy tsar on Friday.

Burgum, who will also serve as interior secretary, will be tasked with co-ordinating Trump’s energy agenda across government agencies and enacting a sweeping deregulation plan to boost fossil fuel supplies.

“America is blessed with vast amounts of ‘Liquid Gold’ and other valuable Minerals and Resources, right beneath our feet,” Trump said in a statement on Friday announcing Burgum’s appointment.

“We will ‘DRILL BABY DRILL’, expand ALL forms of Energy production to grow our Economy, and create good-paying jobs,” he said in the statement.

On top of its role overseeing exports, the Department of Energy is responsible for the nuclear weapons programme, environmental clean-ups and scientific research and development through its oversight of the country’s national laboratories.

Jennifer Granholm, Biden’s energy secretary, has played a prominent role promoting the Inflation Reduction Act, the president’s landmark climate law, which Trump has vowed to repeal.

Granholm told the FT any efforts to unpick the legislation, which earmarked billions of dollars in tax credits for clean energy would be equivalent to “stabbing ourselves because it would be so foolish”.

Matthieu Blazy, the French-Belgian talent behind the surge in popularity of Bottega Veneta, has beaten out all rivals to clinch the top job in fashion: designer of Chanel and heir to Karl Lagerfeld. That’s what senior industry sources told Miss Tweed this week.

If confirmed as Chanel’s new creative director, which is expected to happen shortly, Blazy will infuse new life into the French powerhouse and help it recoup some of the relevance and fashion edge it has lost in recent years under the aegis of Lagerfeld’s former right hand, Virginie Viard, who stepped into the role after the maestro died in 2019, on the cusp of the pandemic.

The appointment of Blazy, who’s been creative director of Bottega Veneta since 2021, should be announced mid-December, several industry sources said. “I understand the contract has already been signed,” one senior industry source said. “Chanel’s new designer is young, French and is running something smaller,” a person close to Chanel told Miss Tweed, all but confirming Blazy was the person the brand had chosen to lead its next creative chapter. WWD followed Miss Tweed on Friday also reporting Blazy had emerged as the top contender for the job.

Chanel and Kering, parent of Bottega Veneta, did not reply to requests for comment.

In 2019, Alain and Gerard Wertheimer, who own Chanel together with their half-brother Charles Heilbronn, replaced the brand’s long-standing designer Karl Lagerfeld at his death with Viard. “It was an easy solution but really Chanel should have started looking for a proper replacement for Karl 15 years ago but they did nothing about it,” one veteran fashion CEO told Miss Tweed a few months ago. “Now the Wertheimers are in a difficult position because they have to find someone fast.”

After Viard left six months ago, following a disastrous show, Chanel and the Wertheimers finally were forced to move and things moved relatively quickly with Blazy, sources said.

Still, the timing of Blazy’s arrival at Chanel remains under wraps. It will be tough for Kering to see him go. Under his creative leadership, Bottega Veneta has become Kering’s best-performing label, not only in terms of sales growth but also in terms of fashion authority and news flow.

This week, Blazy presented in Venice the brand’s first fine jewelry collection, which includes huge 18-karat-gold teardrop earrings, a chain bracelet and a twig-inspired necklace – all produced in Vicenza, Italy’s fine jewelry-making capital, and the traditional manufacturing headquarters of Bottega Veneta.

Usually, a non-competition clause in his contract would prevent a designer from joining a competing house immediately. That said, Chanel could pay Kering a certain amount to compensate for poaching the French group’s most popular designer.

In any case, Blazy’s departure is a heavy blow to Kering, which is already weighed down by big sister brand Gucci’s turnaround. Blazy has been building out Bottega Veneta to make it a bigger brand counterweight to Gucci. It comes after Blazy launched Bottega’s first perfume collection in September. They are the first fragrances designed and produced in-house - small building blocks part of Kering’s ambition to build a beauty division from scratch. In the spring Bottega launched its first candle collection. During his three-year tenure at Bottega, Blazy has made the brand more closely associated with high craftsmanship, something Chanel values and appreciates.

Chanel is France’s champion of arts and crafts. It financially supports a wide range of training programs and schools and has invested in many companies with unique savoir faire in areas such as embroidery, lace, feathers, hats, shoes and gloves. Two years ago, President Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte inaugurated Chanel’s 19M building, which regroups 700 artisans from 12 different specialized suppliers as well as the high-end swimwear provider Eres. The triangular building located on the periphery of Paris appears to have been woven in concrete threads. Designed by starchitect Rudy Ricciotti, it’s inspired by a vertical textile weft.

KERING

Kering is not as vertically integrated as Chanel. It relies on a wide network of different suppliers, many of them located in Italy. Bottega Veneta is the only fashion brand within the group that’s growing right now. In the three months to Sept. 30, its sales were up 5 percent, while those of Gucci and Saint Laurent were down 25 percent and 12 percent respectively. The group’s “other” division, which includes Balenciaga and Alexander McQueen, saw revenue fall 14 percent. “It’s going to be hard for Kering to lose Blazy,” one person close to Kering said. “He really brought positive energy to the brand and to the group more generally.”

But if Blazy really does join Chanel, Kering will get credit for having spotted his talent and given him the means to express and deploy it successfully at Bottega Veneta.

Chanel interviewed many design stars for the job, industry sources say. Pieter Mulier at Alaïa, Marc Jacobs, Hedi Slimane and Simon Porte Jacquemus among them. None of these fitted the bill, they said. “Blazy is great for Chanel,” one industry source said. “Slimane would have broken Chanel and turned it into his own brand, Jacobs would have failed to bring something new and I know that with Pieter, it did not work out,” the source said.

Alaïa renewed Mulier’s contract last spring, a source with first-hand knowledge of the matter told Miss Tweed on condition of anonymity. Mulier, who was Blazy’s boyfriend until last year, is doing a great job at Alaïa and helping the brand’s sales continue to grow in spite of the downturn. Alaïa may be generating less than €100 million in annual sales, it is the strongest growing fashion brand at Swiss group Richemont, owner of Chloé and leather goods maker Delvaux.

Jacquemus has been remarkably open and candid about having been interviewed at Chanel, spreading himself the rumour that he could get the job, industry sources said. It looked like a tactic to make himself and his brand more desirable as he was beginning talks with potential investors to raise funds to finance his brand’s international expansion.

Citing industry sources, WWD said Bottega had already initiated a search for Blazy’s successor, “reaching out to second-in-command talents, as is the custom of brand parent Kering.”

YOUNG DESIGNER

Blazy is a smart choice for Chanel. He’s young for a top designer at just 40 years old. Karl Lagerfeld was designing until his death aged 85. Beyond his fashion design talent, Blazy has a lot of things to say more broadly about culture, which is crucial in our social media-driven age. It’s the right time for him to join Chanel. He has enough experience to be regarded as a safe pair of hands and many years of creativity ahead of him.

Matthieu Blazy’s world is light, witty and joyful - exactly what consumers need in these dark times. His latest collection presented in Milan in September was full of audacious, colorful and playful silhouettes. He has also produced original and refreshing ad campaigns that used nature as a backdrop.

Blazy’s ascent is an acknowledgment of the influence of the creative cauldron that is Belgium, home to great designers such as Martin Margiela, Ann Demeulemeester, Dries Van Noten, who just left his brand. There is also Anthony Vaccarello, who is still at Saint Laurent and Raf Simon, who co-designer at Milanese powerhouse Prada with Miuccia Prada. And a new generation is rising, on which Miss Tweed reported in 2021, led by designers such as Mulier but also Ester Manas, Meryll Rogge, Tom Van der Borght and Jan-Jan Van Essche.

Blazy today lives between Antwerp and Milan. He is a graduate of La Cambre in Brussels. Blazy started his fashion career as men’s designer for Raf Simons, another habitue of Antwerp’s creative scene. Blazy then joined Maison Margiela, founded by Martin Margiela, to design the ‘Artisanal’ line and the women’s ready-to-wear show. In 2014, he became senior designer at Céline, before working again with Raf Simons at Calvin Klein from 2016 to 2019. He was appointed ready-to-wear design director at Bottega Veneta in 2021 but started showing his work only in 2022.

Alors que le groupe mène un intense bras de fer avec ses créanciers, Altice a confié sa filiale XPFibre à la banque Natixis dans le cadre d’une fiducie.

Patrick Drahi, connu pour affectionner les montages complexes et opaques, s’est cette fois surpassé. En toute discrétion, le patron d’Altice vient d’appliquer son génie financier à XPFibre, la société qui détient le réseau en fibres optiques de SFR. Jusqu’à récemment, son capital était détenu à 49,99 % par trois fonds (Omers, Allianz et Axa) et à 50,01 % par Altice France, la filiale qui regroupe ses actifs de Patrick Drahi dans l’Hexagone (SFR, etc.). Mais selon nos informations, c’est Natixis qui en est depuis quelques mois l’actionnaire. Plus précisément, le groupe de télécoms et les trois fonds ont confié leurs actions à la banque dans le cadre d’une fiducie (trust en anglais) : la filiale de BPCE gère désormais cette participation pour leur compte.

Vous pouvez partager un article en cliquant sur les icônes de partage en haut à droite de celui-ci.La reproduction totale ou partielle d’un article, sans l’autorisation écrite et préalable de l’Informé est strictement interdite. Pour plus d’informations, consultez nos conditions générales de vente.Pour toute demande d’autorisation, contactez-nous.

Contacté, Axa explique que cette fiducie a été mise en place à cause du refinancement de la dette de XPFibre intervenu fin mars. La société avait alors levé 5,775 milliards d’euros, dont 3,45 milliards d’euros auprès des banques Natixis, Société Générale, Crédit agricole et BNP, le solde via des placements privés auprès d’investisseurs européens et américains. Tout cet argent a permis de verser un dividende exceptionnel à ses actionnaires (Altice empochant ainsi un milliard d’euros), mais au prix d’un doublement de l’endettement supporté par XPFibre. Si Patrick Drahi a considéré qu’il pouvait alourdir le fardeau pesant sur sa filiale, c’est que cette dernière a quasiment achevé le déploiement de son réseau, et devient donc bien plus rentable. Il y a un an, Altice avait promis « à moyen terme » un excédent brut d’exploitation (Ebitda) de 600 millions d’euros sur un chiffre d’affaires de 900 millions, soit une marge plantureuse de 66 %…

Selon notre enquête, Natixis détient désormais (en tant que fiduciaire) une holding intermédiaire, XPFibre Groupe, qui est le nouvel actionnaire de XPFibre. Une opération qui a valorisé le capital de XPFibre à 4,5 milliards d’euros. Pour mémoire, la société avait été constituée par le rachat du réseau en fibre de SFR pour 3,5 milliards d’euros en 2018, puis celui de Covage l’année suivante pour un milliard supplémentaire. Il y a un an, Patrick Drahi a tenté de vendre XPFibre sur une valorisation du capital de 7,5 milliards d’euros (hors dette), mais sans aboutir.

Vous pouvez partager un article en cliquant sur les icônes de partage en haut à droite de celui-ci.La reproduction totale ou partielle d’un article, sans l’autorisation écrite et préalable de l’Informé est strictement interdite. Pour plus d’informations, consultez nos conditions générales de vente.Pour toute demande d’autorisation, contactez-nous.

Pourquoi avoir orchestré une telle opération ? Il faut noter que XPFibre a levé sa dette à un moment de vive tension entre Patrick Drahi et les créanciers d’Altice France. Début mars, il leur a demandé de faire une croix sur un tiers des 24 milliards d’euros qu’il leur devait… ce qu’ils ont, logiquement, très mal pris. Certes, ces créances sont gagées par des actifs. Mais, au printemps, le milliardaire a retiré trois bijoux de famille de ces garanties : ses data centers, ses médias (BFM & RMC) et sa participation dans XPFibre. Dans le jargon financier, on dit qu’ils ont été transférés vers des filiales « non restreintes » (unrestricted) d’Altice France, sans doute immatriculées au Luxembourg. Résultat : les créanciers n’ont plus accès aux deux milliards d’euros provenant de la vente des data centers et des médias, ni au milliard de dividende exceptionnel de XPFibre. Selon Bloomberg, Patrick Drahi aurait même fait remonter vers ses holdings personnelles luxembourgeoises les 1,5 milliard d’euros récoltés en vendant BFM. Quant aux 50,01 % détenus dans XPFibre, on ne sait plus trop où ils sont logés désormais. Jeudi, Patrick Drahi a indiqué dans un communiqué cryptique que cette participation était désormais détenue par « une filiale latérale d’Altice France, qui n’est pas une filiale restreinte d’Altice France, ni Altice France Holding, ni une filiale d’Altice France Holding ». Conclusion, selon un spécialiste de la restructuration de dettes : « il paraît évident que, vu ce contexte tendu, la fiducie sur XPFibre a été mise en place à la demande des prêteurs, pour garantir que cet actif ne s’évapore pas vers d’autres cieux. »

Contactés, Omers et Axa ont précisé que « les droits économiques et de gouvernance restent inchangés ». Omers a ajouté que « XPFibre Groupe est détenu, via Natixis en tant que fiduciaire, par XPFibre Holding. L’actionnariat de XPFibre Holding reste inchangé entre Altice France, Omers, Allianz et AXA ». Pour leur part, Altice et XPFibre n’ont pas répondu, tandis que Natixis et Allianz se sont refusés à tout commentaire.

Knife assault in Wuxi comes as country reels from car ramming in Zhuhai that killed 35

Eight people were killed and 17 injured in a stabbing attack at a vocational college in the eastern Chinese city of Wuxi late on Saturday, the country’s second mass-casualty event in a week.

Police said in a statement that they had detained a suspect, a 21-year-old male student surnamed Xu, at the Wuxi Vocational Institute of Arts and Technology in Yixing, a smaller city within Wuxi, in eastern Jiangsu province.

China was shaken earlier this week by its worst mass killing in a decade when a driver in the southern city of Zhuhai rammed his vehicle into a crowded exercise area, killing 35 people and injuring dozens more.

Authorities on Saturday charged the driver, a 62-year-old man surnamed Fan, state media said.

According to the Yixing police statement, Xu confessed to carrying out the attack after he was detained at the scene. It attributed his motivation to frustration with failing his exams and dissatisfaction with his salary at his internship.

Analysts have said that a spate of violent attacks in recent months could point to aggravated social tensions as the China grapples with slowing economic growth that has led to job losses and dented household incomes.

“The thing that seems to stand out is that people are resorting to such mass violence because they seem to feel that they don’t have much to lose,” said Steve Tsang, head of the Soas China Institute at the University of London.

In May, two people were killed and 10 injured in an attack at an elementary school in south-eastern Jiangxi province. The same month, an assailant killed two people and injured 21 at a hospital in Yunnan.

In June, a deadly attack targeted a school bus full of Japanese children in Suzhou, while a separate rampage killed three people in a metro station in Shanghai.

In July, a 64-year-old man killed three people with a knife and injured one in Shenyang, in north-eastern Liaoning province, while in September, a man stabbed a boy walking to a Japanese school in Shenzhen, in southern China. The boy died the next day in hospital.

In Wuxi on Saturday, police said they were investigating and authorities were working to treat the victims.

But information about many of the attacks has been sparse, with internet discussions of the events censored and footage removed from internet platforms.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping released a rare personal statement addressing the Zhuhai attack, which analysts said reflected authorities’ sensitivity about social stability and desire to strengthen public controls. Xi called on officials across the country on Tuesday to improve risk prevention “at-source”.

Chinese policymakers have also unveiled a series of stimulus packages in an effort to support the country’s flagging property sector and spur economic growth, including a $1.4tn fiscal package this month aimed at restructuring local governments’ off balance sheet debt. But economists have called for more direct measures to alleviate household burdens and restore consumer and investor confidence.

“The problem here is that this is still being seen primarily in the light of a social and political stability challenge, so a security-focused response is likely,” said Tsang.

“What will be needed is to change the environment [to] make people feel that there is a better future for them.”

China’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside of weekday working hours.

UK’s largest investment site accused of continuing to recommend Woodford’s flagship fund even as it ran into trouble

More than 5,000 people who invested in Neil Woodford’s collapsed equity fund are suing Hargreaves Lansdown, claiming the UK’s largest investment site continued to recommend the product even as it ran into trouble.

Claims firm RGL Management said the number of people taking part in a group High Court claim against Hargreaves Lansdown had nearly doubled over the past two years. It added that the average individual claim, including interest, was about £20,000.

The final number of claimants is expected to be larger, with RGL planning to file on behalf of more Hargreaves Lansdown customers next year.

Hargreaves Lansdown declined to comment. It previously rejected all the claims made by RGL when it filed for the first set of claimants in 2022 “for lack of a substantive basis of claim”.

Hargreaves Lansdown is the UK’s largest seller of retail investment products and promoted Woodford’s flagship UK Equity Income Fund from when he set up his own business in 2014.

However, the fund collapsed in 2019 after investors rushed to try to withdraw their money because of the poor performance of its shareholdings and private company investments.

The fund was frozen as a result. Nearly 300,000 people had invested in it through Hargreaves Lansdown, accounting for £1.6bn of the fund’s total £3.7bn.

RGL said the claim was for “investor losses sustained as a result of Hargreaves Lansdown’s conduct in continuing to recommend [the fund] right up to the day of its highly publicised collapse, despite Hargreaves Lansdown being aware of the fund’s long-standing portfolio diversification and liquidity issues”.

The firm said claimants were seeking the return of the money they lost, as well as damages for the missed opportunity of generating returns by investing elsewhere. It is working with law firm Wallace LLP.

RGL said on its website that if the claim is successful, the “amount to be deducted from gross proceeds . . . by the RGL Group will be 25 per cent including VAT”, noting that this includes legal fees among other costs.

Michael Green, director at RGL Management, said that “adding thousands more claimants . . . represents another step closer to holding Hargreaves Lansdown to account for its conduct” in relation to the Woodford Equity Income fund. RGL filed to the High Court on behalf of the new claimants on Friday.

Woodford’s fund administrator, Link Fund Solutions, reached a settlement agreement with the Financial Conduct Authority last year over its role in the fund’s collapse.

As part of the agreement, LFS has provided redress to affected investors through a compensation scheme worth up to £230mn. As a result, LFS avoided a £50mn fine from the watchdog.