TheChek News Flow

puzzle: White failed to win. Can you do better?

Switzerland’s “chess queen”, the former women’s world champion Alexandra Kosteniuk, starred when leading grandmasters competed in two major events in London last week and this.  

The 40-year-old scored the winning point in the $1mn Tech Mahindra Global Chess League when she won on time for Triveni Continental Kings against PBG Alaskan Knights. Next, she produced the upset of Monday’s opening round of the €58,000 WR Masters Cup when she defeated Uzbekistan’s world No6 Nodirbek Abdusattorov, who had a winning position but appeared to forget the en passant capture rule at move 32. However, the Uzbek won their return game, then reached the next round after a tiebreak.

Overall, the verdict on the GCL, now in its second season, was mixed. It brought some of the best GMs to London in a highly competitive format, but the time limit of 20 minutes each for the entire game, without any per move increment, produced a strong random element to the results.  

Last week’s article related how the world No1, Magnus Carlsen, lost on time in a winning position against the rising talent Alireza Firouzja. In their return game the roles were reversed, as Firouzja’s clock went to 0.00 in a drawn position. In both cases the margin of defeat was approximately one second, as was also the case when China’s Tan Zhongyi overstepped against Kosteniuk.  

The GCL’s objective is to popularise chess on television and other mainstream media, but the absence of a genuine geographical identity for the teams is a drawback. Triveni won for the second year running, but fielded only one player who also took part in 2023. 

The WR Masters Cup also has an innovatory format. It is a 16-player knockout at slow classical time rates, compressed into four days by games at 10am and 5pm, with an Armageddon tiebreak, where a draw counts as a win for Black, at 10pm.

The Cup, unlike the GCL, had two English participants: the youngest ever UK grandmaster Shreyas Royal, 15, who drew his first game against India’s former world champion Vishy Anand before losing the second, and the nine-year-old prodigy Bodhana Sivanandan, who was outclassed by the world No5 Arjun Erigaisi.

Alleged chess cheating always makes headlines. Last weekend Kirill Shevchenko, the 22-year-old Ukrainian-born, Romanian world No 69, was expelled from the Spanish team championship after being accused of using a cell phone to analyse in the toilet. His results. a win and a draw, were both registered as losses. Shevchenko became a grandmaster at age 14, and is the strongest chess player ever to be sanctioned for cheating.

Perhaps significantly, he also won chess.com’s online Titled Tuesday last week with what was described then as an “impressive” performance.

It is a strange case, not least because many grandmasters compete in national leagues, with fees calculated more by their titles and ratings than by their results in that league’s games or matches. The reward in this alleged case would have been just a few extra rating points against the very real risk, which happened, of an opponent noticing absences from the board and complaining to the arbiter.

Proposed sale of controlling stake to US private equity group has sparked backlash in country

France’s industry minister has said that the option of blocking a €15.5bn deal to sell Sanofi’s consumer pharmaceuticals division to US private equity fund Clayton, Dubilier & Rice is “absolutely on the table” if the government’s requirements are not met. 

“Legally, we can oppose it,” industry minister Marc Ferracci said on France Inter radio on Tuesday as a political backlash against the potential deal flared. He added that the government was asking the French pharmaceutical company and the proposed buyer for commitments on employment, industrial footprint, volume productions in France and research and development. “If these commitments are not made, there are options in the regulatory code for blocking this sale.”

The requirements by French officials are not new and were previously expressed during the sale process, but they have taken on a political dimension since Sanofi announced CD&R’s offer had triumphed over a consortium led by French private equity group PAI last week.

The deal, which values the business at €15.5bn and would be one of Europe’s biggest this year, is not yet closed and negotiations are continuing between the parties. 

Under the terms being discussed, Sanofi would keep a 50 per cent stake in the consumer business — dubbed Opella — but would sell a 50 per cent controlling stake to CD&R. Ministers this week also raised the possibility that a state investment entity, such as Bpifrance, could also take a stake to act as a guarantor for French interests.

On Monday finance minister Antoine Armand assured during a visit to a Sanofi factory with Ferracci, that Doliprane — a brand of paracetamol produced by Sanofi — “will continue to be produced in France”.

Sanofi’s divestment of its consumer business has sparked a backlash because France typically is protective about foreign takeovers of its largest companies, and also because instances of shortages affecting medicines such as insulin and childhood vaccines have risen fourfold to reach about 1,600 in 2023, according to a report by the French senate. 

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the government rationed paracetamol, which is the most frequently bought medicine in the country. Sanofi itself came under fire for failing to produce a Covid vaccine despite being one of the top vaccine makers in the world at the time.   

While CD&R appears poised to clinch the transaction, people close to PAI have argued that the French nature of the fund could help assuage some of the sovereignty concerns. However, PAI is working with far less financial firepower compared with CD&R, which raised a record €26bn last year.

PAI teamed up on its offer with partners including Singapore’s GIC and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority to give it more financial muscle, but it means PAI would be a minority within the consortium it leads. 

Someone with knowledge of the proposed deal said that the political reaction in France was “not unexpected and not unusual” given “there are well-known social processes in France”, particularly when there was “seen to be an outside buyer”. They added: “Doliprane is a very important French product — it’s made in France and is in every medicine cabinet.”

CD&R and PAI declined to comment.

Critics also argue that Sanofi’s mooted deal undermines President Emmanuel Macron’s years-long push to reshore pharmaceutical production in the name of winning back sovereignty in important areas of the economy and creating more industrial jobs. In 2020, Macron set a goal of reviving paracetamol production in France, including its active ingredient which Sanofi sources from Asia, within three years — a goal that has not been met.

The spat has become an unwanted problem for the new minority government led by Prime Minister Michel Barnier, forcing it into the uncomfortable position of arguing that a divestment does not break Macron’s earlier promises.

Politicians from across the spectrum have come out against the deal. About 60 lawmakers from the three parties within Macron’s own centrist group have signed an open letter addressed to the finance minister saying the divestment “completely contravenes” the “priority” of making France more self-reliant in healthcare. They called on the ministry to “immediately activate an inspection of the proposed operation so as to evaluate the need to block it or not”.

Far-right National Rally president Jordan Bardella said the divestment continued the “fire sale of France”, a reference to other big companies that have been sold to foreign buyers only to be hit with lay-offs, such as the 2014 sale of Alstom’s energy business to General Electric. “The risk to our health sovereignty and employment are considerable; it would be incomprehensible for the state to let this happen,” Bardella said.

Harry Stebbings, the U.K. podcaster who broke into the world of tech with his 20-minute interviews of venture capitalists and founders, has parlayed that fame into becoming a VC himself. Stebbings has now closed his third investment vehicle, and it’s his biggest yet: 20VC, a firm named after the podcast series, has closed a $400 million fund.

At a time when European technology companies continue to lag behind their U.S. counterparts at almost every stage of investment, 20VC’s new fund will focus on backing startups in the region, using Stebbings’ media nous and connections to bring more attention to them.

“I’m really fed up of everyone shitting on Europe,” he said in an interview earlier today. “We have unbelievable companies, and we have incredible people. We need to make Europe great again. MEGA!” he added with a giggle.

About $125 million of the fund will be dedicated to seed investments, and $275 million will go to Series A rounds. The fund is yet to be deployed, Stebbings said, as 20VC is still investing out of its second fund, which raised $140 million in 2021.

The new fund was raised in four weeks, which is a relatively quick turnaround considering the constraints that continue to swirl around venture capital.

There are a few other notable takeaways from the news:

Venture capitalist firms like Accel, as well as successful founders who have become investors, have an established presence in London and the wider region. Yet, a number of such investors are still putting money into 20VC. Why? Stebbings has put a very personal face onto his firm, and he helps investors hedge their bets.

In all, 20VC said 40 founders from companies like Atlassian, Candy Crush, Canva, Capital One, Datadog, Deliveroo, Eventbrite, Iconiq, Procore, Spotify, UiPath and Vinted invested in the fund. Also investing were general partners from Accel, Benchmark, Coatue, Cyberstarts, Founder Collective, Founders Fund, Khosla, NEA and TCV and Thrive.

“We are the feet on the ground for the U.S. funds too,” he said.

Stebbings has tapped into the zeitgeist around being an online creator who has built a successful business around his content. In his case, that business is in the area of venture capital, but he leverages his profile to help open doors and get in on term sheets.

“The media platform has really helped,” he said. 20VC was essentially a “micro VC” when it debuted in 2020, with just $8.3 million to invest, typically to piggy back on seed rounds. Now it gets upwards of 50 million views on TikTok and YouTube — large numbers for what is effectively VC and startup inside baseball. “Having your Sam Altman’s on the show, your Marc Benioff’s, it makes a big difference. Founders do really want to take your money.”

Stebbings himself is not a technologist by training — he was at university studying law when he started 20VC and dropped out when it all took off. He makes no attempts to hide this.

“I don’t follow technology,” he said when I asked him if any categories are standing out right now. “I follow great entrepreneurs. I think it’s absolutely bullshit that we think we’re smarter than markets. If there’s one thing we have to learn, it is that great founders shape markets. And if that’s the case, my job is to simply find the best founders before anyone else.”

Beyond that, his selling point from early on has been that he brings operational experience to his portfolio companies.

“20 VC has done over £10 million in revenue and is a very profitable and sustainable business,” he said. “No, I’m not a technology founder, but I am an operator. I work seven days a week, 15 hours a day, and I have done for years.”

Now, that has been widened out, with 20VC operating what Stebbings describes as “sub-funds” in categories like sales, product and growth. These have teams also run by people with operator experience, who have their own carry and seek out companies (and founders) that look interesting and could benefit from their practical advice in these areas.

Despite breaking the mold for how VCs are formed, Stebbings has yet to change the economics of VC. It remains “like any other market,” he said. “One percent of the companies make 90 percent of the gains.”

That might not be such a bad thing, though. “We can do more to normalise that in Europe, encouraging trying and failing,” he said.

For VCs, that extremely uneven math ironically might spell more opportunity for big wins, not less, in his opinion. “Venture returns, on the whole, will go down, [but] for 1% of firms, they will be much, much bigger than ever, and better than ever, because the size of the outcomes is so much larger than ever,” he predicted.

That said, Stebbings is still waiting for his “MEGA” payout. A lot of the firms he’s invested in are still relatively young, the IPO market is still pretty dead, and some of the startups on its portfolio still point to the U.S. focus 20VC had when it started off.

The closest, Stebbings said, is probably Tripledot, the London-based gaming studio that appears to be valued at just over $1 billion, per PitchBook, and last raised in 2022.

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The brand hosted a 30th anniversary party for valued guests at The Glasshouse in New York City.

Last week, Nobu celebrated its 30th anniversary at The Glasshouse in New York City with a star-studded and sushi-filled party. From cofounder Robert De Niro to surprise guest performer David Foster, Nobu’s most valued guests flocked to the space to congratulate Chef Nobu Matsuhisa.

Ahead of the event, Matsuhisa, who is private and rarely does media engagements, sat down with WWD to discuss the highlights over the last 30 years for the iconic brand, his partnership with De Niro and what could be on the horizon.

While Nobu now maintains 54 restaurants, 41 hotels and 12 residences, Matsuhisa is quick to defer to others, including his cofounders De Niro and Meir Teper, when asked about how he has achieved such success.

“I have great partners. They understand each other. They support me… My team has strong passions,” he said. “With me and with all my team, including partners, [we’re] trying to make the same goal. That’s why the Nobu hotels and restaurants keep growing.”

Matsuhisa doubled down on his relationship with De Niro as a key driver of his and the business’ success. The two were connected over 30 years, when De Niro first ate at Matsuhisa’s restaurant Matsuhisa, which opened in 1987. De Niro, who also owns the Tribeca Grill and the Greenwich Hotel in New York City, knew Matsuhisa was special and wanted to develop a restaurant concept with him that would eventually become Nobu. But at the time, Matsuhisa wasn’t ready. He also had no idea who De Niro was.

The chef recalls saying at the time, “Thanks Bob, but [I] cannot because [it’s] too early.”

Four years later, De Niro asked again. This time, Matsuhisa knew who he was and was ready to accept the offer.

“After four years, he was still watching me,” said Matsuhisa. “I started business with him because I can trust him, because that’s four years [of] watching.” It was also De Niro who pushed Matsuhisa to develop the Nobu hotels and residences.

Shortly after praising their longterm partnership, De Niro popped into the conversation to hug Matsuhisa and congratulate him on the anniversary celebration. Later in the evening, addressing the room, De Niro said, “It’s been an amazing adventure… I knew that he was so special when I went to Matsuhisa over 30 years ago and tasted his food.”

While Matsuhisa has been able to grow his restaurant and hospitality empire, it hasn’t always been easy.

“[Business,] it’s always a challenge, especially the new restaurants, new cities, new locations,” he said, emphasizing that maintaining a clear vision has been his guiding light. “We have the same passion: good food… quality, simple, beautiful, tasty. The Nobu philosophy is always like this.”

It’s this central untainted vision that keeps guests coming back — this vision, and of course, Nobu’s signature dishes like the black cod with miso or yellowtail sashimi with jalapeño. Now, 30 years later, Matsuhisa says customers are drawn to Nobu for comfort and quality.

“The loyal customer [keeps] coming, and also kids too. Now, the kids graduate and get married, so [it’s the] second generation. [They’re] much more comfortable with us,” he said. “It’s always homey and comfortable.”

It’s those qualities that have led Matsuhisa’s first name to become a recognizable brand that stands on its own.

“I’m very proud of myself because Nobu’s name has grown all over the world,” he said. “The funny story now [is] younger kids, they like the Nobu restaurant… Kids say, ‘Oh, Nobu is not a person’s name. It’s a restaurant’s name.’”

While Nobu likely has more on the horizon, Matsuhisa isn’t focused on what’s next. Instead, he’s taking it day by day.

“I like to try my best in this moment,” he said.