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Skateboard and artisanal glassware take pride of place in Andelman’s selection available until Dec. 20 at the auction house’s Paris flagship.

HANDLE WITH CARE: Most people would balk at having skateboards and handcrafted stemware in the same room.

But that’s exactly why Sarah Andelman wanted to put the two categories together in “Attention, Fragile!,” the holiday retail pop-up that she curated on the first floor of Sotheby’s new Paris headquarters.

“Any movement or momentum and something can be broken, that’s what made me think of putting them together,” the brand consultant told WWD during a walkthrough of the space, which opened Thursday.

Running until Dec. 20, it offers works of art, glassware, collectible skateboard decks and a selection of holiday-minded gourmet treats, alongside a sampling of the auction house’s fixed-price luxury goods from the likes of Hermès, Rolex and Chanel.

Sotheby’s wanted to kick off its retail offer in Paris with a metaphorical bang – and who better for the task than Andelman, previously the purchasing and image director of cult concept store Colette, said Marie-Anne Ginoux, managing director of Sotheby’s Paris.

Auction houses are “a world of their own,” one she hadn’t explored in depth before curating an auction for Pharrell Williams’ Joopiter platform, Andelman said. It’s their pandemic-driven evolution that particularly stood out to her.

“What struck me when I went on Sotheby’s ‘buy now’ section is that you had the same products you’d find on StockX, like sneakers and skateboards,” she continued. “I felt they were talking to two completely different markets.”

When Sotheby’s came calling, it felt apt to offset the traditional image of auction houses as purveyors of major art and classic luxury items with skateboard culture.

Plus, “[Sotheby’s] reminds me a bit of Colette…in the way it transforms non-stop,” Andelman said.

On the walls are a multitude of skateboard decks, including a trio featuring the work of John Baldessari and a Pantone-themed series of five imagined by Ryan McGuinness and produced by Supreme in 2000.

Carefully arrayed on transport crates are glasses by New York-based designer Jonathan Hansen, who has collaborated with the likes of Thom Browne and Ralph Rucci; Maison Balzac, a 12-year-old label founded in Australia by French-born Elise Pioch Balzac, an Hermès alum turned buyer turned tableware maker; and French designer Sam Barron, who teamed up with Italian master glassmaker Massimo Lunardon for “French Kiss,” a series of 30 unique glasses imagined for this pop-up.

In the salon usually dedicated to retail appointments, Andelman set an installation and selection of goodies from Thai artist PZ Opassuksatit – with a pair of Picassos on the wall.

While the overarching idea is “bringing together crushes,” Andelman said she was also keen to offer products that can’t be found elsewhere in Paris, and keep a broad-ranging mix of expensive and more affordable items.

Alongside decks and artwork that could set you back five figures are “Skateboard Culture,” a newly released book written by skateboarding insider Morgan Bouvant and journalist Sébastien Carayol; a selection of treats such as sweets from Palomas, a Lyon-based chocolatier that’s all the rage among the Paris fashion set; and prize-winning olive oil from La Cavalerie, an estate in Provence that belongs to Cosima Ungaro, the daughter of the late Emanuel Ungaro.

Ahead of the holiday season, she also curated a selection of gifts that range from Just An Idea books to necklaces by Berlin-based jewelry label Avgvst; ceramic objects depicting stationery by French label En Vrac, and a golden waffle by Belgian fashion designer Jean-Paul Lespagnard.

There will also be a series of events throughout the pop-up, including a olive oil and chocolate tasting on Nov. 30 and a skateboard-themed book signing with Raphael Zarka, Fred Mortagne and skateboarder Ed Templeton on Dec. 8.

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Putin says there isn’t any reason to panic following currency’s sharp fall

The Russian economy, surprisingly resilient through two-plus years of war and sanctions, has suddenly begun to show serious strains.

The ruble is plunging. Inflation is soaring, and President Vladimir Putin told the Russian people this week that there isn’t any reason to panic.

The catalyst for the change in economic fortunes was a decision by the Biden administration to ratchet up sanctions on Russia’s Gazprombank, the last major unsanctioned bank that Moscow uses to pay soldiers and process trade transactions, as well as more than 50 other financial institutions.

Gazprombank had been carved out of previous rounds of sanctions to allow allies in Europe to pay Russia for critical supplies of energy. It was a vital conduit for inflows of hard currency in exchange for Russia’s exports.

The ruble fell to a 32-month-low this week, and remained near its weakest point since the days after Moscow invaded Ukraine, according to LSEG data, trading for about 108 rubles to the dollar.

The free fall was stopped after Russia’s central bank intervened in currency markets late Wednesday. The bank said it would stop buying foreign currency for the rest of the year, which it does when the government has an oil-and-gas surplus, a move that should help alleviate a critical shortage of hard currency available to businesses and consumers.

Putin said Thursday that “the situation is under control and there are certainly no grounds for panic.” Economy Minister Maxim Reshetnikov said Wednesday that concerns about how the sanctions were affecting Russia’s foreign trade were behind the ruble slump.

The new sanction measures could gum up Russia’s already constrained trade routes with other countries, Russian officials and analysts say.

It is a pivotal time for the nearly three-year-old war. Russia is advancing along the front line, assisted by North Korean troops and Iranian weaponry. President-elect Donald Trump has promised to end the war in Ukraine quickly, leaving the outlook for current and future sanctions on Russia unclear.

In targeting Gazprombank, a state-controlled lender that began as an energy banking hub but has in recent years grown in importance in other cross-border payments, Washington is trying to stifle one of the last major links to the Western financial system.

Russia has traded more in its own currency and so-called friendly currencies, such as China’s yuan and India’s rupee. Russian businesses have also found workarounds by using cryptocurrencies, or by bartering. But access to dollars remains critical.

After the measures were announced, Turkey said it would talk to the U.S. to try to secure a waiver so it can continue paying Gazprombank for natural-gas imports from Russia, its top supplier. Hungary, one of the few European countries still relying on Russian gas, said that it would also look for solutions.

The sanctions on Gazprombank are having a “chilling effect, where traders, exporters and foreign banks are trying to figure out where their liabilities are, so it’s rational there’s a bit of a panic,” said Rachel Ziemba, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank focused on foreign policy. “But we may see in a couple weeks that new routes open up.”

Russia’s economy took a sharp blow in the months after Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. But heavy government spending and a wholesale reorientation of the economy toward the war effort returned the economy to growth. Huge payouts to soldiers and cheap mortgages helped keep households afloat.

Military spending hit a post-Soviet high this year and is planned to rise to more than $120 billion next year, making up over 30% of total spending for the year.

But the stimulus has had dangerous side effects. Most notably, inflation is running at more than twice the central bank’s target. The bank has jacked up interest rates to 21% this year, which has done little so far to cool the overheating economy. A record labor shortage, as working-age men go to the front, has further fueled inflation.

Now, the plummeting ruble threatens to further increase the cost of imports. Consumer inflation is already running at close to 9% this month, according to official data. An alternate measure compiled by market-research firm Romir found that the average cost for everyday goods and services was up 28% in mid-November compared with last year.

Tatiana Orlova, lead emerging-markets economist at Oxford Economics, expects Russia’s central bank to raise rates to 23% next month. She also expects the government to reimpose capital controls requiring exporters to repatriate more of their foreign-currency earnings, which boosts demand for rubles.

Those efforts, along with a drop in imports after the holidays, might stabilize the ruble’s value. But higher interest rates will start to weigh more heavily on the economy next year, she said, leading to a recession in 2026. Parts of the economy that aren’t being bolstered by government support, such as agriculture and transport, are contracting.

“The economy is probably at a turning point,” Orlova said. “This very tight monetary policy is driving the economy toward recession.”

Few think Russia is on the precipice of a more serious economic crisis, but the difficulties are expected to mount the longer the war persists.

“The policy trade-offs will become more and more challenging,” said Elina Ribakova, nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Russia is likely to continue eroding its economic prospects by giving priority to the war effort at the expense of healthcare, education and other nonmilitary areas, she said.

Ordinary Russians were rattled by this week’s drop. They still watch the dollar exchange rate closely, and the ruble’s slide past 100 rubles per dollar was a psychologically important threshold for gauging the health of the economy. Against the Chinese yuan, the ruble has fallen nearly 10% this month.

On the social-media app Telegram, which is popular with Russians, a user pleaded: “Please tell me that everything will be okay, I feel sick.”

The Russian central bank’s official account responded, “Everything will be fine.”

Regulatory review in 2022 found fintech lacked proof of address for hundreds of thousands of customers

European regulators rebuked Wise, the London-listed fintech, over its anti-money laundering controls and forced the payments group into a formal remediation plan, according to five people familiar with the matter.

A review by the Belgian National Bank, which supervises Wise in Europe, found in early 2022 that the fintech lacked proof of address for hundreds of thousands of customers, said three of the people.

As a result, Wise devised a remediation plan, approved by the regulator, that required it to contact all of the customers in a matter of weeks to request their proof of address, the three people said. The plan also required it to freeze the accounts of customers who did not provide the documents in time, they added.

The probe highlights the challenges for fast-growing fintechs looking to scale up their anti-financial crime capabilities while balancing user experience with adequate risk controls. Wise, formerly known as TransferWise, allows customers to send fast payments across borders at a cheap rate. Many of its customers use its service to send large sums across borders to buy property. 

Wise said it took “its responsibility to protect its customers and prevent money laundering very seriously”.

“In 2021, the National Bank of Belgium carried out a routine review of Wise Europe as part of a marketwide exercise in the wake of Brexit. We worked closely with our regulator in Belgium and have fully implemented their recommendations.”

The Belgian National Bank declined to comment.

To cope with the scale of the task, Wise moved some of its customer service staff to its anti-financial crime function and experienced a jump in queries from customers, said two people familiar with Wise’s efforts.

“Around a third of our global team is dedicated to fighting financial crime and helping to ensure that we are in compliance with the requirements of the more than 65 regulatory licences that we maintain around the world,” Wise said.

Wise implemented the remediation plan in the weeks that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which led the EU to put sanctions on many individuals connected to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime. One person familiar with the process said that the company had been presented with the findings of the probe before the start of the war.

Later that year, Wise received a $360,000 fine from the United Arab Emirates’ financial regulator over failures in its anti-money laundering controls including its due diligence for high-risk customers.  

In 2023, the UK’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation disclosed that Wise had allowed the account of a company owned by an individual on the country’s Russia sanctions list to transfer £250. 

The group also paused the onboarding of its UK and European business customers last year, with then-interim chief executive Harsh Sinha telling the FT that Wise had not anticipated the degree of extra due diligence that would be required following the wave of sanctions stemming from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Wise listed in London in 2021 at a £9bn valuation, a move that was hailed as a vote of confidence in the UK market, which has long struggled to compete with New York as a destination for fast-growing tech companies. 

BHP’s need for copper prompts speculation of fresh Anglo bid

The six-month dealmaking standstill since rejection of the last takeover offer ends today

At Escondida, the world’s largest copper mine, BHP has some problems: ore grades are declining, the rock is getting harder and a $5bn concentrator needs to be replaced. The company will also have to spend as much as $10bn to upgrade the facilities over the next seven years.

The challenges in Chile and a global race for a metal crucial for the energy transition have analysts questioning whether BHP will revive its bid for Anglo American, six months after its initial £39bn takeover attempt failed.

Mike Henry, chief executive of BHP, the world’s largest mining company, has so far been coy about future acquisitions, but is clear that the company wants more copper assets.

“The commodity is so attractive, that we would like to have more by way of future growth,” he told the Financial Times this month.

That hunger drove BHP to spend $2bn for a stake in a copper prospect in Argentina in the summer, raising eyebrows over the price and highlighting strong demand for the metal, which is used in utility grids, wiring and electric vehicles.

The ultimate question is whether BHP’s copper craving will lead to another move for Anglo. Such a deal would create a copper behemoth that controls a tenth of global production, and bolster the Australian company’s growth prospects in copper.

BHP is free to launch another attempt to acquire Anglo from today under London takeover rules that mandate a six-month standstill after withdrawal of the previous offer.

“An approach from BHP is very much still on the cards,” said Marina Calero, an analyst at RBC. “The initial approach was all about copper, and that’s still pretty much the case — Anglo American has a very attractive copper portfolio.”

London-listed Anglo fended off the initial bid and launched its own radical restructuring, which includes disposing of its coal, platinum and nickel assets, as well as the De Beers diamonds business. The plan is already showing signs of success, which could complicate a future bid by BHP.

Anglo, founded in South Africa in 1917, has raised $930mn by selling down its stake in Johannesburg-listed Anglo American Platinum, also known as Amplats, before a planned spinout next year. On Monday, it secured a $3.8bn deal for its remaining Australian coal mines.

The disposal of the coal mines, which happened despite a fire that threatened to derail the process, has strengthened faith in Anglo chief executive Duncan Wanblad and boosted the company’s shares.

Anglo’s share price has risen 18 per cent since early April, before BHP’s first offer, while that of the Australian-based BHP has fallen 11 per cent, making an all-share deal as originally proposed potentially more expensive.

Nevertheless, some analysts and bankers believe that demand for copper and the expense of building new mines mean BHP will probably make another bid.

“The reasons why they had to buy in April are still pretty much all there . . . If anything the case for copper demand has only gotten stronger,” said George Cheveley, a portfolio manager at investment manager Ninety One, who formerly worked at BHP. “They should still do it.”

BHP expects demand for the red metal to increase 70 per cent by 2050, compared to 2021, and for the price to reach $4.5 per pound, the level it uses in internal calculations to assess investment returns, from $4.1 per pound.

As the cost of maintaining production at Escondida and similar mines rises, analysts calculate it will often be more attractive for mining companies to invest capital in buying copper assets, rather than expanding existing ones.

“The capital intensity of the copper projects is going to be higher and higher,” said Chis LaFemina at Jefferies, one of the analysts who attended a recent tour of Escondida hosted by BHP. “I think ‘buy versus build’, still favours ‘buy’,” he added.

Some analysts believe BHP could make a move before Christmas, while others expect it may wait until next year, when Anglo’s restructuring process is further along.

An early move could lead to BHP having to absorb parts of Anglo’s business that it does not want, such as Amplats and the De Beers diamond business.

Preconditions of its first bid included requiring Anglo to sell South African assets such as Kumba Iron Ore. The complicated structure of the proposed transaction, which was vehemently opposed by Anglo’s leadership, ultimately doomed it to failure.

“There’s a very good chance they will just keep their powder dry until they see how Anglo executes [its disposal programme],” said Richard Hatch, mining analyst at Berenberg.

But waiting holds its own risks. BHP might have to contend with rivals who are attracted by Anglo’s streamlined business, or be forced to pay a higher premium as Anglo’s stock gets re-rated.

“Once [Anglo’s management] clean up, they will be an easy target,” said the chief executive of a major mining company.

Glencore, which is already a partner with Anglo in the Collahuasi copper mine in Chile, could be a logical bidder for Anglo, according to bankers.

A potential fall in BHP’s share price, which is closely linked to iron ore prices that are under pressure from the weak Chinese property market, would also make a takeover more expensive.

For Henry, the deal would secure his legacy by reorienting the company towards “future-facing” minerals such as copper and potash. 

Since taking up the top role in January 2020, he has sold off the oil and gas business, and all of BHP’s thermal coal mines. In his second year on the job, he approved the $5.7bn development of Jansen potash mine in Canada, and announced that BHP would move its primary listing from London to Sydney.

BHP bought copper miner Oz Minerals for $6.4bn last year, and this year paid $2bn to acquire a 50 per cent stake in Argentine copper miner Filo.

Last month, Henry went to South Africa where he met government officials alongside chief development officer Catherine Raw, leading to renewed speculation that it was preparing a new bid for Anglo.

But BHP’s top executives have learned the hard way to avoid commenting on whether it will come back to bid for Anglo again.

Last month chair Ken MacKenzie said at the AGM that BHP had “moved on” from its Anglo bid. But the company was forced to issue a clarification to the London stock exchange that same day — making clear his remarks were not intended to rule out another bid.

That option remains on the table.