>>> US After Hours Summary: ARQT +16.9% spiking on quarterly results; DLO -20.5%

After Hours Summary: ARQT +16.9% spiking on quarterly results; DLO -20.5%, INFN -12.4%, BOOT -7.5% amid sell-offs following earnings

After Hours Gainers:

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: ARQT +16.9%, NXT +7.9%, GSM +5.7%, SDRL +4.6%, KYTX +1.9%, NU +1.2%

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to news: WOOF +7.8% (appoints new Executive Chairman), KRMD +6.9% (signs Phase III clinical supply agreement), BLNK +3.4% (contract with NY as official EV charging provider), FOUR +3.1% (CEO bought $5.8 mln worth of stock), BGS +3% (several insider buy disclosures), AMK +1.9% (issues April report), STTK +1.3% (to present additional data), IAUX +1.2% (results from drilling at Granite Creek), WAFD +0.8% (increases repurchase authorization), AKAM +0.6% (CEO discloses stock buy of $2.0 mln REAX +0.4% (approves repurchase plan), BMRN +0.4% (to reduce global workforce), NBTX +0.1% (FDA protocol acceptance for new randomized phase 2 Study)

After Hours Losers:

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: DLO -20.5%, INFN -12.4%, BOOT -7.5%, PBH -3.7%, DHT -2.6%, NUVB -2.3%, CSWC -0.2%

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to news: VSEC -3.2% (stock offering), BHC -1.6% (updates connected to Norwich XIFAXAN), MGY -1.3% (affiliates of EnerVest agreed to sell 12 mln shares), HMC -0.6% (trimming China workforce, according to Nikkei), GVA -0.2% (CFO to retire; names successor), NOC -0.1% (CFO to retire; appoints new CFO, increases dividend)

>>> US Close Dow +0.32% S&P +0.48% Nasdaq +0.75% Russell +1.14%

Closing Stock Market Summary
The stock market ended the session on an upbeat note. The major indices all settled at or near session highs, which marked a fresh all-time closing high for the Nasdaq Composite. The S&P 500 settled within ten points of its all-time high close.

The Russell 2000 continued its recent outperformance, gaining 1.2% today, with some added help from another meme stock rally that saw the likes of GameStop (GME 48.75, +18.30, +60.1%) and AMC Entertainment (AMC 6.85, +1.66, +32.0%) trade up more than 100% at one point before succumbing to some profit-taking activity. The Russell 2000 is the best performing index this month, up 5.7% so far.

The major indices traded in mixed fashion for most of the session, however, as participants digested the April Producer Price Index (PPI). The headline inflation readings were hotter-than-expected, up 0.5% month-over-month for total PPI and core PPI versus an expected 0.3% and 0.2%, respectively, but the sizable downward revisions to last month's readings kept the market response more mixed rather than negative.

Fed Chair Powell called the data "quite mixed" in a moderated discussion at the Foreign Bankers' Association's annual meeting.

The Treasury market faced immediate selling pressure following the release of the PPI report, but price action quickly shifted and the bond market settled with gains in front of the Consumer Price Index tomorrow at 8:30 ET. The 10-yr note yield was at 4.48% before the data, jumped to 4.52% immediately after the release, and settled the session at 4.45%.

Stocks shifted into rally-mode in the afternoon trade, coinciding with shares of Alphabet (GOOG 171.93, +1.03, +0.6%) making a sharp turn higher. This was in response to GOOG introducing new AI features at its developers conference. Other mega cap stocks traded up alongside Alphabet, boosting the broader market.

In other corporate news, Dow component Home Depot (HD 340.50, -0.46, -0.1%) received a negative response to its earnings report that stemmed from disappointing sales activity at the home improvement retailer.

Eight of the 11 S&P 500 sectors settled with gains led by information technology (+0.9%) and real estate (+0.7%). The consumer staples sector was the worst performer, logging a 0.2% gain.

  • S&P 500:+10.0% YTD
  • Nasdaq Composite: +10.0% YTD
  • S&P Midcap 400: +8.6% YTD
  • Dow Jones Industrial Average: +5.0% YTD
  • Russell 2000: +2.9% YTD

Reviewing today's economic data:
  • April NFIB Small Business Optimism 89.7 (consensus 88.9); Prior 88.5
  • April PPI 0.5% (consensus 0.3%); Prior was revised to -0.1% from 0.2%; April Core PPI 0.5% (consensus 0.2%); Prior was revised to -0.1% from 0.2%
    • The key takeaway from the report is that nearly three quarters of the increase in final demand prices was due to a 0.6% increase in the index for final demand services, something that will detract from the Fed's confidence that inflation is on a sustainable path to its 2% target.

Wednesday's economic calendar features:
  • 7:00 ET: Weekly MBA Mortgage Index (prior 2.6%)
  • 8:30 ET: April CPI (consensus 0.4%; prior 0.4%), Core CPI (consensus 0.3%; prior 0.4%), April Retail Sales (consensus 0.4%; prior 0.7%), Retail Sales ex-auto (Briefing.com consensus 0.2%; prior 1.1%), and May Empire State Manufacturing Index (consensus -9.0; prior -14.3)
  • 10:00 ET: March Business Inventories (consensus 0.0%; prior 0.4%) and May NAHB Housing Market Index (consensus 51; prior 51)
  • 10:30 ET: Weekly crude oil inventories (prior -1.36 mln)
  • 16:00 ET: March net long-term TIC flows (prior $71.5 bln)

>>> Baupost Group (Seth Klarman) discloses updated portfolio positions in 13F fi

Baupost Group (Seth Klarman) discloses updated portfolio positions in 13F filing: New GDS SOUN FTRE positions
Highlights from Q1 2024 filing as compared to Q4 2023 (all amounts are approximate):
  • New positions in: GDS (2.6 mln shares), SOUN (1.13 mln), FTRE (0.3 mln), EXP (0.26 mln), WCC (0.21 mln)
  • Increased positions in: CLVT (to 30.6 mln shares from 25.5 mln shares), HLF (to 2.24 mln from 1.68 mln)
  • Maintained positions in: LBTYK (42.31 mln shares)
  • Closed positions in: GTN (from 3.76 mln shares), GTX (from 2.99 mln), TSEM (from 2.71 mln), LLYVA (from 1.9 mln), SSNC (from 1.03 mln), FNCH (from 0.07 mln)
  • Decreased positions in: WBD (to 3.71 mln shares from 25.24 mln shares), LSXMK (to 4.35 mln from 14.85 mln), LSXMA (to 2.68 mln from 8.18 mln), VSAT (to 15.03 mln from 16.17 mln), TBPH (to 6.59 mln from 7.42 mln), FIS (to 5.58 mln from 6.36 mln), CRH (to 2.71 mln from 3.35 mln), J (to 0.51 mln from 0.73 mln)

FT : US sanctions entities involved in Raiffeisen’s aborted Oleg Deripaska deal

US sanctions entities involved in Raiffeisen’s aborted Oleg Deripaska deal
The parties had conducted an ‘attempted sanctions evasion scheme’ connected to the Russian oligarch, Washington says

The US has sanctioned three entities and an individual involved in an asset-swap deal Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International has recently aborted.

Washington said the sanctioned parties had been involved in an “attempted sanctions evasion scheme” connected to the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. It did not name Raiffeisen.

The Vienna-based lender last week announced it was “walking away” from a planned deal to acquire a 25 per cent stake in the Austrian construction company Strabag once held by Deripaska — in exchange for assets of the bank in Russia — because it had not been able to “obtain the required comfort” from regulators to proceed with the transaction.

Raiffeisen had previously said the deal was compliant with EU and US sanction regimes, and did not involve dealing with Deripaska. The US first sanctioned the Russian businessman in 2018.

The bank had said it was transacting with Russian companies that were not connected to the oligarch and had legitimately acquired his stake in Strabag separately.

The US Treasury on Tuesday placed the three companies in question, and one individual involved with them, Dmitrii Beloglazov, on its sanctions list.

The US state department said: “The United States is today designating one Russian individual and three Russia-based companies involved in an attempted sanctions evasion scheme connected to Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.”

The US Treasury said the “opaque and complex supposed divestment could have unfrozen more than $1.5bn worth of shares belonging” to Deripaska.

Raiffeisen declined to comment.

The bank has come under mounting pressure over its business in Russia — and various attempts to try to repatriate assets there. As other western lenders have pulled out of the country, it has continued to grow, becoming a relative safe haven for Russian depositors.

Despite shrinking its Russian loan book, huge spreads between deposits and central bank rates mean Raiffeisen continues to rake in big profits. Its division in the country has, for the past three years, made more money than the rest of all the bank’s other subsidiaries combined. This has led the group to pay more taxes to Russia’s government.

Kremlin-imposed capital controls mean the bank can neither send assets back to Austria, nor sell its Russian business easily. Raiffeisen has explored asset-swap transactions before. In March 2023 the bank weighed a €400mn deal with Russia’s Sberbank, which also failed to come to fruition.

Investors have grown concerned about the possibility of a regulatory crackdown against Raiffeisen, as western governments look to turn the economic screws on Moscow.

The bank’s planned AT1 bond issue was pulled last year amid investor concerns over its Strabag deal.

The lender last month disclosed the European Central Bank had ordered it to speed up efforts to shrink its portfolio in Russia, ordering even deeper cuts to lending there. The requirement would make efforts to try to sell its Russian division almost impossible, Raiffeisen warned.

TechCrunch : Google announces Gemma 2, a 27B-parameter version of its open model

Google announces Gemma 2, a 27B-parameter version of its open model, launching in June

On Tuesday, Google announced a number of new additions to Gemma, its family of open (but not open source) models at its annual Google I/O 2024 developer conference.

The headline-grabbing release here is Gemma 2, the next generation of Google’s Gemma models, which will launch with a 27 billion parameter model in June.

Already available is PaliGemma, a pre-trained Gemma variant that Google describes as “the first vision language model in the Gemma family” for image captioning, image labeling and visual Q&A use cases.

So far, the standard Gemma models, which launched earlier this year, were only available in 2-billion-parameter and 7-billion-parameter versions, making this new 27-billion model quite a step up.

n a briefing ahead of Tuesday’s announcement, Josh Woodward, Google’s VP of Google Labs, noted that the Gemma models have been downloaded more than “millions of times” across the various services where it’s available. He stressed that Google optimized the 27-billion model to run on Nvidia’s next-gen GPUs, a single Google Cloud TPU host and the managed Vertex AI service.

Size doesn’t matter, though, if the model isn’t any good. Google hasn’t shared a lot of data about Gemma 2 yet, so we’ll have to see how it performs once developers get their hands on it. “We’re already seeing some great quality. It’s outperforming models two times bigger than it already,” Woodward said.

FT : Investors shun real estate as higher for longer fears bite

Investors shun real estate as higher for longer fears bite
Global fund managers cut their property allocations to lows not seen since 2009

Global investors have slashed their allocations to real estate to a 15-year low as the sector struggles under the pressure of high interest rates.

A net 28 per cent of managers were underweight the real estate sector in May, down 13 percentage points on the previous month, according to Bank of America’s latest global fund manager survey. 

The commercial property market has undergone a painful shift away from ultra-low interest rates, compounded by uncertainty over the future of offices following the Covid-19 pandemic. Recent concerns that borrowing costs in big economies are set to remain higher for longer have weighed further on the sector.

“A change in interest rate expectations is a contributing factor to this change in sentiment, as fundamentally nothing has changed since March other than the inflation story in the US,” said Oliver Salmon, a director in Savills’ world research team. “Interest rate declines are needed for market sentiment to improve.”

The BofA survey of 245 money managers with $642bn in assets under management suggests allocators are moving away from real estate and into consumer stocks, bonds and cash.

The global commercial real estate sector lost investors 4.1 per cent in 2023, the lowest annual return since 2009, according to MSCI’s Global Annual Property index. 

Some European real estate markets performed even worse last year than during the 2008-09 financial crisis. The office sector has been hit particularly hard, suffering high vacancy rates and uncertain demand as occupiers adjust to new working patterns.

Fewer rate cuts in 2024 would impact refinancing in the sector as costs increase and asset values decline. About $820bn of US commercial property loans are likely to mature this year, according to MSCI, including about $214bn in loans that were extended after maturing last year. 

“In the US, there is concern over a significant refinancing gap,” said Salmon. “The longer that rates stay higher, the more difficult it is to ‘extend and pretend’.”

Many owners are reluctant to sell their properties and crystallise sharp losses, in the hope that the market rebounds in the near future.  

Dealmaking has also slowed down. The global real estate market has seen seven consecutive quarters of falling transaction volumes, with dealmaking dropping 18 per cent year on year in the first quarter of 2024, MSCI’s data shows. 

The BofA survey showed sentiment among fund managers was at its most bullish since November 2021, with 64 per cent of investors saying they did not expect a recession in the next 12 months. Higher inflation is the number one “tail risk”, according to 41 per cent of investors.

FT : Novo Nordisk to test weight-loss drugs’ effect on alcohol use and liver dis

Novo Nordisk to test weight-loss drugs’ effect on alcohol use and liver disease
Study opens up potential to tackle a condition with few available treatment options

Novo Nordisk is trialling its weight-loss drugs to explore if they can reduce alcohol intake and treat alcoholic liver disease, as it seeks to expand the uses of the blockbuster treatments.

The Danish pharmaceutical company has started recruitment for a mid-stage trial looking at whether an estimated 240 patients using semaglutide, the active ingredient in Wegovy, and cagrilintide, an ingredient in another Novo Nordisk drug in development for weight loss, can treat liver damage and reduce alcohol use in participants with alcoholic liver disease.

Novo Nordisk is already assessing semaglutide’s effects in liver disease linked to obesity — metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis — but this is the first study to assess the effectiveness of the new generation of weight-loss treatments on alcoholic liver disease, which kills more than 30,000 Americans a year.

The phase-two trial, set to finish in June 2025, opens up the possibility of offering a treatment for a disease with few other options. Treatments for alcoholic liver disease have remained largely unchanged for the past four decades, and rely heavily on abstinence combined with nutrition therapy and steroids. The trial, which was first reported by Bloomberg, was posted on the Clinicaltrials.gov database earlier this week.

The drug has shown health benefits beyond weight loss. A trial in November showed that it could reduce the risk of death in patient with cardiovascular disease by 18 per cent.

New analysis of this data on Tuesday showed users of the drug could sustain weight loss over four years and gain cardiovascular benefits regardless of their weight. Novo Nordisk is also exploring the benefits of semaglutide in Alzheimer’s disease.

The company is relying on expanding the use cases for its drug to convince health systems to adopt them more broadly. In the US, the Food and Drug Administration approved Wegovy for use to lower the risk of heart disease in March, enabling it to be covered by Medicare Part D plans, which provide coverage for more than 50mn American.

However, health systems in Europe are struggling to afford the high costs of the drug. The UK has limited its use to two years, and Denmark, where Novo Nordisk is headquartered, only provides the drug privately.

Novo Nordisk declined to comment.

Event details and information
US Pharma and Bio

FT : Iran open to ‘serious dialogue’, says UN nuclear chief

Iran open to ‘serious dialogue’, says UN nuclear chief
Fraught relations with Tehran, which faces sanctions over its atomic programme, appear to be easing

Iran has shown a willingness to engage in “serious dialogue” with the UN’s nuclear watchdog for the first time in more than a year, according to the agency’s head, in a sign Tehran is seeking to ease tensions with the US.

Rafael Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told the Financial Times that Tehran and the watchdog, which have endured fraught relations for months, could be entering a “different phase” after he held talks in Iran.

Tehran appears willing to discuss “concrete” issues, he said.

The apparent shift in tone was prompted by an invitation from Iran’s nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami for Grossi to attend talks in the Islamic republic. The call came in mid-April at a time of heightened tensions between Iran, Israel and the US.

Around that time, Iranian officials issued veiled threats that Tehran could change policy and seek to weaponise its expansive nuclear programme.

But after meeting Eslami and other senior officials last week on his first trip to Iran since March 2023, Grossi said he sensed an opportunity to resolve some points of contention, including improving the IAEA’s ability to monitor the republic’s nuclear activities.

“I see in them a recognition that it is better to have some engagement than to continue on a completely divergent course, leading to more escalation and perhaps even more danger, including war,” Grossi said. “It’s very important because we reconnected after many months of talking past each other.”

He added that Washington and Tehran also continued to keep open a “bilateral channel”. The FT revealed that senior US and Iranian officials held secret indirect talks in Oman in January as both sides sought to prevent the Israel-Hamas war from exploding into a full-blown regional conflict.

Long-running hostilities between Israel and Iran reached a peak in April after Iran fired more than 300 missiles and drones at the Jewish state in retaliation for an Israeli strike on the republic’s consulate in Damascus. It was the first direct Iranian strike on Israel launched from the republic. Israel responded by firing drones and missiles at an air base near the Iranian city of Isfahan, which is close to the Natanz nuclear site.

The tit-for-tat strikes were considered calibrated to avoid an all-out war and caused limited damage. But analysts expressed concerns that Iran could expand its nuclear programme — which is already enriching uranium close to weapons grade — to use as leverage with the US and as a warning to its enemies.

Grossi said Iran had not altered the scale or pace of its nuclear activity since Hamas’s October 7 attack and Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza sparked hostilities across the Middle East.

He added that there was “no evidence to suggest that Iran has moved, or is moving, or is planning to move, to a weapons programme”.

Iran has been enriching uranium up to 60 per cent purity, close to weapons grade, for more than two years. It is part of Tehran’s response to former US President Donald Trump’s decision to unilaterally abandon the 2015 nuclear accord Tehran signed with world powers.

Grossi said Tehran now has sufficient fissile material to produce about three nuclear bombs within a matter of weeks, if it chose to do so. Tehran insists its programme is for civilian purposes only.

“There have been oscillations in the production of 60 per cent [enriched uranium], but nothing dramatic,” Grossi said. “What we see is there is a steady base. They have been faster in the past, but what we see is a regular [pace] — it’s like a jog.”

But “the programme is growing, it’s getting bigger, it’s getting wider, it’s getting stronger — no doubt”.

Grossi said technical talks between the IAEA and Iranian officials had continued since his return from the republic. Tehran made no commitments to the IAEA during Grossi’s trip, but both parties discussed issues that have caused friction between them.

The watchdog is hoping to use the talks to convince Tehran to reinstall agency cameras at nuclear facilities, allow its inspectors access to plants used to manufacture parts for centrifuges, and to visit facilities linked to a long-running IAEA probe into past nuclear activity at three undeclared sites.

However, Iran has previously made agreements with the agency only to renege on its obligations as the IAEA’s ability to work in the republic has been restricted since Trump pulled out of the nuclear accord in 2018 and imposed waves of crippling sanctions on the republic.

In March last year, Tehran pledged to reinstall about 30 IAEA cameras at its nuclear facilities, but only nine were made operational, Grossi said.

The regime has also previously appeared to make compromises before IAEA board of governors’ meetings, which western nations can use to censure the republic. The next governors meeting is on June 3.

But Grossi said what was important was ensuring there was no “complete disengagement” or “rupture”.

“This is what we are trying to do is keep things contained, and [to have] levels of visibility that are useful and meaningful,” Grossi said.

FT : Boeing’s 737 Max deliveries slow down after door panel accident

Boeing’s 737 Max deliveries slow down after door panel accident
Just 16 of the aircraft shipped to customers last month as company improves manufacturing processes

Boeing has made the fewest deliveries of its 737 Max since last year, as quality problems at the plane maker force a slowdown in production.

Just 16 Maxes were delivered to airlines and lessors last month, the company said on Tuesday, dropping from 24 in March and the fewest since last September. Boeing made 24 deliveries overall.

The decline comes as Boeing reels from an accident in January, when a door panel blew out from a 737 Max operated by Alaska Airlines shortly after take-off. While no passengers were seriously injured, it sparked multiple investigations by US authorities.

Since January, Boeing has had “quality stand-downs” at more than 20 sites in the US, UK and Australia, including its 737 Max factory in Renton, Washington. The events involve halting production to focus on improving safety and quality. Chief executive Dave Calhoun told investors last month it was working to improve processes including training and inspections.


Boeing is also no longer accepting 737 Max fuselages that do not meet specifications from its supplier Spirit AeroSystems. The goal is to eliminate “travelled work”, where jets move through the production line with problems addressed later in the assembly process.

Quality problems also led to the slowdown in 737 Max deliveries last September, when only 15 were received by customers after Spirit had incorrectly drilled holes in the rear pressure bulkhead for some fuselages.

Deliveries are important to the amount of cash that Boeing takes in, since customers pay the bulk of the price when they receive their planes. Boeing reported that it used $3.9bn in free cash during the first quarter, compared with the use of less than $800mn a year earlier.

The low number of Max deliveries in April will be one of the factors contributing to what chief financial officer Brian West has said will be “another sizeable use of cash” in the second quarter.

After the Alaska Airlines accident, a preliminary investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board found the four bolts meant to secure the panel to the fuselage were missing.

The US Federal Aviation Administration has also launched investigations and found “multiple instances” where Boeing and Spirit failed to meet manufacturing and quality requirements. The US Department of Justice is investigating whether Boeing met standards laid out in a $2.5bn agreement to defer criminal prosecution for misleading regulators in relation to a design flaw that led to two fatal crashes of the 737 Max in 2018 and 2019.

Deliveries of the 737 Max have fluctuated since the FAA lifted the grounding on the jet in November 2020, from a low of four in April 2021 to a high of 54 in December 2022.

WSJ : Breaking Up Anglo American Now Could Mean Merging It Later

Breaking Up Anglo American Now Could Mean Merging It Later
Anglo American’s plan to sell off assets and strengthen its balance sheet would likely make it an even more attractive acquisition

Mining is about splitting things apart to isolate the valuable bits. So is a big part of mining giant BHP’s BHP 2.45%increase; green up pointing triangle proposed takeover of Anglo American AAL -3.49%decrease; red down pointing triangle.

On Tuesday, Anglo outlined its plan to remain a stand-alone business, having rejected a second potential offer valued at roughly $43 billion from BHP on Monday. Anglo wants to keep the copper mines that its Australian suitor covets, its cash-generative iron-ore operations and its British nutrient-mining startup, which is probably too speculative to sell at a sensible price. Everything else is on the block: De Beers diamonds, platinum, steelmaking coal and nickel.

The new strategy, which has been in the works for months, isn’t all that different from what BHP proposed. The Australian miner wants Anglo to demerge its South African iron-ore business Kumba, which is listed in Johannesburg, whereas Anglo would keep it. Conversely, BHP would keep Anglo’s steelmaking coal to combine with its own, alongside the merger of the two companies’ copper and other iron-ore assets. But both plans would break up the old Anglo conglomerate.

This outcome is a clear win for investors. The company has long traded at a discount to other big mining companies because of its conglomerate structure, with a confusion of different commodities, two listed companies and even a luxury brand in De Beers all under one roof. Over the 10 years before BHP’s takeover approach, Anglo’s enterprise value as a multiple of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization was on average 21% lower than those of BHP, Rio Tinto and Glencore.

With Anglo’s shares up 25% since BHP’s initial proposal, that discount has turned into a 5% premium. But the stock might not fall much even if BHP backs away, given the alternative of a breakup. In a note published Monday, brokerage RBC estimated that the sum of Anglo’s parts could be worth $48.6 billion if the conglomerate carried out BHP’s divestment plan on its own—13% more than BHP’s latest bid proposal.

Crucially, a breakup would also free up Anglo’s debt-heavy balance sheet for much-needed investment to boost copper output. At a Bank of America conference in Miami on Tuesday, BHP Chief Executive Mike Henry made much of his company’s superior financial strength. But if Anglo sells assets to pay down debt, this is no killer argument for a deal.

So what additional value would merging with BHP bring to the table? The question hinges on the synergies available through combining mining operations—the cost savings possible through combined marketing, joint procurement and so forth. With its deal still at the informal “proposal” stage under Britain’s arcane takeover rules, BHP hasn’t publicly quantified these.

Whether BHP goes hostile with an improved, formal offer before a deadline of May 22 imposed by the U.K. takeover code will likely depend on its estimate of these synergies, set against the risks that its deal gets bogged down in antitrust probes and the politics of South Africa, where Anglo was founded 107 years ago and remains deeply embedded. This is also what investors should focus on if they are presented with a clear choice next week.

BHP might conclude that it is worth biding its time. Anglo’s own breakup plan will throw up assets to buy, such as the steelmaking coal business the South African company no longer wants but BHP would keep. And a slimmer Anglo, which would emerge toward the end of next year under the company’s own strategy, would also make an easier target for BHP to take another swing at. Even if it loses this battle, BHP needn’t give up on the war.