FT : Sotheby’s earnings plunge as art market catches a chill

Sotheby’s earnings plunge as art market catches a chill
Arch-rival Christie’s also suffering from slowdown in auctions

Sotheby’s has reported an 88 per cent plunge in its core earnings and a 25 per cent decline in auction sales, as a chill in the art market hits one of the industry’s most famous brokers.

The first-half figures at Sotheby’s main auction business reveal the extent of the financial pressure the group came under before it struck an investment deal with Abu Dhabi this month.

Weaker luxury spending in China is among the factors weighing on demand for fine art and affecting both Sotheby’s and historic rival Christie’s.

One of Sotheby’s marquee auctions fell short of expectations in May, when the winning bid for a Francis Bacon portrait of his lover George Dyer missed the low end of its $30mn-$50mn estimate.

Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund ADQ agreed to take a minority stake in the auction house this month, through a $1bn capital raise funded with its present owner Franco-Israeli billionaire Patrick Drahi, who has been looking to cut debt across his business empire.

Ahead of the deal, Sotheby’s told lenders that its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) plunged 88 per cent to just $18.1mn in the first half of 2024. Even after it stripped out further costs — such as severance pay and legal settlements — from this earnings measure, Sotheby’s adjusted Ebitda fell 60 per cent to $67.4mn.

It also booked $558.5mn of revenue in the first six months of 2024, a 22 per cent fall on the $712.3mn recorded in the same period last year, according to an earnings report shared with its lenders.

The results cover Sotheby’s main auction business and do not include earnings generated under other arms of parent company BidFair, such as its financial services division that makes loans to art collectors.

Sotheby’s declined to comment.

The slowdown at Sotheby’s follows Christie’s last month publicly reporting a similar 22 per cent drop in auction sales over the same period.

Sotheby’s results also reveal that it intends to use $700mn from the planned capital raise to “reduce the company’s leverage”, with the deal with ADQ expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2024.

Founded in 2018, the ADQ sovereign wealth fund is tasked with fuelling development in the oil-rich emirate of Abu Dhabi and is chaired by the UAE’s powerful national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed al-Nahyan. An Abu Dhabi branch of the Louvre museum opened in 2017.

Sotheby’s reported more than $1.8bn of net “long-term debt” at the end of June, suggesting that it will still carry over $1bn of such debt even after the capital raise is completed. The company’s total liabilities stand at $4.3bn.

The wider Sotheby’s group has also borrowed money through creative means this year, with its financial services affiliate in April raising $700mn through new bonds backed by loans the auction house provides to art collectors.

Drahi took over Sotheby’s in a leveraged buyout in 2019, returning the centuries-old auction house to private ownership three decades after it listed on the New York stock market and bringing him into direct competition with French billionaire François Pinault, who owns Christie’s.

The deal handed Drahi a trophy asset alongside his Altice business empire, which he transformed from a niche cable company into a global telecoms conglomerate through a decade-long acquisition spree.

Now faced with rising interest rates and market jitters over a criminal probe into one of Altice’s co-founders, Drahi has been increasingly selling off assets in a bid to tackle his group’s over $60bn debt pile.

Earlier this month, Drahi agreed to sell a stake of nearly 25 per cent in BT Group to Indian billionaire Sunil Bharti Mittal’s conglomerate, having borrowed heavily from banks to buy up shares in the British telecoms operator in previous years.

FT : Dating apps develop AI ‘wingmen’ to generate better chat-up lines

Dating apps develop AI ‘wingmen’ to generate better chat-up lines
Tinder, Hinge, Bumble and Grindr are racing to create chatbots that can coach Gen Z users to flirt

Online dating giants are racing to create AI-powered “wingmen” that can coach frustrated Gen Z users on how to craft better chat-up lines and develop a budding romance.

Tinder, Hinge, Bumble and Grindr said they are building or testing AI tools and chatbot assistants to do everything from generate icebreakers and building profiles to providing feedback on user flirting.

“AI is going to help people make better connections,” Grindr chief product officer AJ Balance told the Financial Times. “It’s that friend in the bar who’s helping you to ask someone out — but in the virtual context.”

This industry pivot towards AI-powered relationship advice and coaching comes as so-called dating app fatigue, particularly among younger users, continues to plague the online matchmaking market.

Online dating groups are betting that personalised feedback and advice from AI chatbots will bring disappointed daters back to their products. 

Balance said Grindr’s chatbot assistant, called the Grindr Wingman, would fend off burnout by helping users overcome the “biggest pain points” of online dating, including by generating conversation prompts based on users’ unique profiles and chat histories.

He added AI could ultimately eliminate the hard work of online dating: “The idea of a wingman talking to someone else’s wingman, maybe to see what it’d be like to go on a date or to find common areas of interest, is something that’s worth exploring,” he said.

Tinder, the product that first popularised the act of sorting through prospective matches’ profiles by swiping left or right, has likewise said that it aims to use AI “to support daters throughout the entire dating journey” within “the coming 12 months”.



The company has already begun a limited rollout of an AI profile-building tool, designed to alleviate “the burden of photo selection”, which scans a user’s personal photos and selects the best images. Bumble has said it is also developing a similar feature.

The moves come as online dating groups struggle to attract new users. Shares in $830mn Bumble, which owns the eponymous female-focused dating app as well as Badoo and Fruitz, tumbled more than 25 per cent in August after the company slashed its revenue outlook and acknowledged that a recent brand overhaul had not yet reignited user growth.

Meanwhile the $9.6bn giant of the dating industry Match Group is under pressure from activist investors to deliver a turnaround at its largest product, Tinder, which reported a seventh consecutive quarter of declines in paying subscriber numbers in the three months to June. 

A survey by OnePoll in March found that more than three quarters of dating app users had experienced burnout, with 40 per cent of them blaming their exhaustion on repeated failures to find a good match. 

Hinge, Match Group’s other major product besides Tinder, said it was also pursuing the “ultimate goal” of users feeling “like they have a personal matchmaker (driven by AI) inside the app”.

The relationship-focused app, which has continued to grow amid the recent slowdown at Tinder and Bumble, was the first mainstream dating product to provide prompts for users to answer on their profiles, such as “The way to win me over is . . . ” or “The dorkiest thing about me is . . . ”.

Hinge said it was planning to launch a chatbot tool offering AI-generated feedback on user answers to its signature prompts.

Match Group added it is investing in recruiting AI talent as a “game-changing” priority for its flagship dating products. The company said engineers from Hyperconnect, the South Korean social media company it acquired in 2021, would be redirected to build AI tools at Tinder and Hinge. 

Balance said Grindr was hiring relationship experts and sexual health experts to ensure that its chatbot assistant provided positive advice to users, while Bumble chief executive Lidiane Jones said that her company’s AI “conversation support” would “help our customers gain confidence to be their best selves”. 

Some experts remain unconvinced.

“The endpoint of all this is about turning love into an efficient matchmaking activity rather than an unpredictable turn of destiny,” said Carolina Bandinelli, a researcher at the University of Warwick. “And I don’t think that’s possible.”

CrunchBase : 5 Interesting Startup Deals You May Have Missed In August: Laundry,

5 Interesting Startup Deals You May Have Missed In August: Laundry, Space And Allergy Startups See Cash

Big bucks for dirty laundry
We don’t talk about laundry here much, so let’s clean that up.

This month New York-based Cents locked up a $40 million Series B led by Camber Creek. The startup provides a business management platform for all who take part in the dirty business of cleaning clothes — including laundromats, dry cleaners and even shared laundry rooms.

The company launched in 2021 and helps cleaners streamline all aspects of their business, including payments, delivery and even marketing.

Now backend platforms that help run business are nothing new, but one dedicated just to laundry is interesting. However, maybe it shouldn’t be surprising, considering it’s a critical errand we all must somehow do — even if that means sourcing it out.

Perhaps that’s why Cents has raised big bucks. The startup has now raised more than $77 million, per the company, and also announced it has acquired Laundroworks — a hardware-based payments system for paying at laundromats and shared laundry rooms.

Cents says its platform is currently used by more than 2,700 retail laundries — or about 1 in 14 laundromats in the U.S. — and more than 3,500 shared laundry rooms.
It would seem its investors are optimistic they won’t be taken to the cleaners.

Allergy protection in your pocket
In the U.S., approximately 33 million individuals manage food allergies, so going out to eat likely can cause some anxious moments.
Allergen detection company Amulet has something that may help. The Madison, Wisconsin-based startup raised a $5.8 million in Series A financing led by HealthX Ventures.

The startup has created the Allergy Amulet, a small device (that kinda looks like a USB drive) that allows people to test for food allergens on the go. The device has portable sensors containing rapid, on-site molecular detection technology that can find allergens, toxins and contaminants.

The startup also has another commercial device for restaurants, suppliers and manufacturers to identify food toxins and environmental contaminants.

If you have allergies, not knowing what’s in your food can be scary. Perhaps carrying this in your pocket can give a little peace of mind.

Space mining
Let’s face it, space is cool — so space startups make this list a lot.

This time it’s AstroForge, which locked up a $40 million Series A led by Nova Threshold.

The Southern California-based startup launched its first mission last year and plans its second later this year.

The new cash will be used for a third mission in which the company is hoping to dock a 440-pound spacecraft on a metallic asteroid next year. If that happens, it will be the first privately funded mission to land on a celestial body beyond the Earth-Moon system.

The company is looking to pioneer off-Earth mining to help address resource depletion.

AstroForge has now raised $55 million, so clearly investors believe that may just happen.

Not just for hangovers
Wellness is a growing sector in tech, as people look to live healthier and hopefully happier lives.

That includes the probiotics field, as ZBiotics’ recent $12 million Series A led by Spring Tide Capital raise can attest. The San Francisco-based startup is looking at ways ancient bacteria can help with health problems that are the result of modern diets and living — looking to develop genetically engineered probiotics that address the diets and toxic byproducts of modern living
If ZBiotics sounds familiar, it’s because the company made waves a few years ago when it unveiled its first product — its Pre-Alcohol Probiotic Drink. The drink breaks down acetaldehyde in the gut and lessens the hated day-after effects of alcohol.

The company says it has more than doubled sales every year of that product and is profitable. ZBiotics will use the fresh cash to transition from a single-product company to a portfolio of genetically modified organism probiotics for health.

Better wood
When a startup is called InventWood and says its goal is to create “superwood,” it gets our attention.

The Frederick, Maryland-based startup locked up an $8 million round this month from investors that included the Grantham Foundation and Builders Vision as it works on its proprietary technology that turns wood into a new high-performance, climate-resilient building material.

What is superwood? The company says it believes it can create a material that is stronger and lighter than steel with higher durability. The technology actually transforms wood’s nano-cellulose structure — nature’s strongest material — into something that can “offer fire, insect, and rot resistance with bulletproof hardness.”

The company is planning its commercial launch in early 2025.

Elctrek : Munich is getting 14 of these 352-ton electric aircraft tractors from

Munich is getting 14 of these 352-ton electric aircraft tractors from Goldhofer

Frequent visitors to Germany’s Munich Airport will be able to breathe a little bit easier soon, thanks to a new deal with the ground support experts at Goldhofer for 14 of its all-electric, 352 ton-rated PHOENIX E aircraft tractors.

You read that right: these electric aircraft tractors are rated to pull aircraft with a take-off weight of up to 352 tons at speeds up to 32 kph (approx. 20 mph). The Goldhofer packs more than enough power in its massive, 700 V lithium-ion battery packs, in other words, to rip the rear bumper off a Tesla Cybertruck and probably slow the rotation of the Earth if it could get enough traction. (That’s called “hyperbole” — Ed.)

The order was placed by EFM GmbH, a company that specializes in aircraft marshaling, de-icing, and air conditioning. And, in recent years, a company that’s become something of a pioneer in the field of zero-emission airport ground handling equipment (GHE).

“This latest investment in Goldhofer equipment is a further milestone for future-proof ground handling by EFM GmbH at Munich Airport,” says EFM’s Managing Director Jörg Abel. “As a pioneer in the field of zero-emission ground support, our goal is to make ground support fit for a sustainable future. Goldhofer’s PHOENIX E tractors make a valuable contribution to our endeavor and will help us achieve our vision of a green future.”

With a team of over 150 operative employees, EFM currently moves some 200,000 aircraft and performs up to 15,000 de-icing operations each year. Its 14 PHOENIX E tractors are expected to be delivered and in operation by 2028.

Electrek’s Take

With the short distances driven at limited speeds under extreme loads, GHE at airports present a nearly ideal use case for battery-electric vehicles. That’s a good thing, too — as demand for on-road fossil fuels drops, airports and airlines – historically responsible for about 4% Earth’s global warming – are becoming a bigger and bigger slice of a rapidly shrinking pie when it comes to fossil fuel emissions.

>>> Weekend Papers Summary

FINANCIAL TIMES
-Sotheby's has reported an 88% drop in core earnings and a 25% decline in auction sales due to a cooling in the art market. The first-half figures reveal the financial pressure the group faced before signing an investment deal with Abu Dhabi earlier this month. Weaker luxury spending in China is affecting demand for fine art and affecting both Sotheby's and rival Christie's. Sotheby's marquee auctions fell short of expectations in May, with the winning bid for a Francis Bacon portrait missing the low end of its estimate. Abu Dhabi-based sovereign wealth fund ADQ agreed to take a minority stake in the auction house through a $1B capital raise.
-Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has fired Lieutenant General Mykola Oleschuk, the commander of the Ukrainian air force, five days after a US-made F-16 jet crash that killed one of Kyiv's top fighter pilots. Zelensky stated that it was necessary to strengthen and protect people, personnel, and soldiers at the command level. Lt Gen Anatoliy Kryvonozhko was appointed acting commander in his place. This marks the third shuffle of a top military post in less than a year. The Ukrainian F-16 fighter crashed during a mission to shoot down Russian missiles and drones in one of the largest aerial attacks mounted by Moscow since its full-scale invasion.
-Brazil's Supreme Court has ordered the suspension of Elon Musk's X, escalating a feud between the billionaire and the top court. Justice Alexandre de Moraes gave regulators 24 hours to shut down access to the platform, which is used by over 20 million Brazilians. The move is expected to inflame public opinion, and any individual or company using virtual private networks to navigate around the block would face daily fines of around $8,000. Musk, a self-declared free speech absolutist, has criticized de Moraes for censorship requests and argued that the moves are part of a fight to protect democracy from misinformation and hateful content.
-Russian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has faced criticism for the rapid advances made by the Russian army in eastern Ukraine since Kyiv's invasion of Kursk. Critics argue that the redeployment of thousands of battle-hardened Ukrainian troops to the Kursk operation has weakened Ukraine's positions. Russian forces are closing in on Pokrovsk, taking several towns and forcing undermanned Ukrainian units to retreat. This loss would threaten the entire region's logistics for Ukraine's military, according to Ukrainian analytical group Frontelligence Insight.
-US Vice-President Kamala Harris has proposed a tax plan to tax the unrealized gains of wealthy Americans, sparking anger from Silicon Valley's wealthiest investors. The plan, part of President Joe Biden's 2025 federal budget, would require people with over $100M in wealth to pay at least 25% on a combination of their income and unrealized capital gains. This would change the way America's richest individuals are taxed, sweeping in investment gains before assets are sold or a person dies. Billionaires like Elon Musk, Warren Buffett, and Jeff Bezos, as well as founders and backers of successful start-up companies, would likely face large tax bills.
-Goldman Sachs is set to cut a few hundred employees as part of an annual review process targeting underperformers. The cuts, expected to begin in the coming weeks, are expected to take a few months to complete. Goldman had 44,400 employees worldwide at the end of June. The bank paused its annual strategic resource assessment during the coronavirus pandemic and resumed it in 2022. Goldman expects the performance-related job cuts to be on the low end of its target range of 1% to 5% of its overall staff.
-Japan is aiming to boost military recruitment by improving living conditions on military bases. The country's defense ministry has requested a record $59B allocation for the fiscal year from next April, as part of a plan to raise the defence-related budget to 2% of GDP by 2027. The plan includes better satellite technology, automation and AI investments, and a strategy to make military careers more attractive. The budget will also allocate money for improved showers, toilets, and privacy in sleeping quarters. The funds will be used to build individual "capsule"-style sleeping rooms on naval vessels.
-Germany has deported 28 Afghans for the first time since the Taliban's return to power in 2021, as the country intensifies its immigration policy following a terror attack in Solingen. Chancellor Olaf Scholz defended the move, stating that "whoever commits crimes cannot expect us not to deport [them]," but refugee advocacy groups criticized it as normalizing an Afghan regime guilty of human rights abuses, particularly against women and girls. Germany's security interests outweigh the interest of protecting criminals and potential terrorists, and it had previously refrained from deporting criminals to Afghanistan and Syria.

THE NEW YORK TIMES
-Vice President Kamala Harris has decided to use President Biden on the campaign trail, as she has risen from No. 2 on the Democratic ticket to No. 1. She must decide whether to distancing herself from the 81-year-old president, who has been pushed out by Democrats due to concerns about his age, mental fitness, and ability to defeat Trump, or to continue embracing Biden and his popular policies. Harris must also decide where Biden should campaign for her, how often, and what he should say. The decision comes as Harris moves from No. 1 on the 2024 election.
-Pennsylvania's Commonwealth Court has ruled that mail-in ballots that are undated or have the wrong date on the outer envelope cannot be thrown out due to violating the state Constitution. The ruling, which is supported by voter advocacy groups, states that tossing ballots because they do not comply with a 2019 law requiring voters to date and sign the outer envelope would violate a State Constitution clause guaranteeing "free and equal elections" and pose a "substantial threat of disenfranchisement." The ruling could play a critical role in November in the battleground state, which polls show is a tossup between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump. The ruling applies only to Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties, and whether it extends across the state will depend on county officials and guidance from the secretary of the commonwealth.
-Former President Donald Trump has announced his decision to vote against Florida's abortion rights measure, Amendment 4, following a conservative backlash. Trump had previously suggested he might support the measure, which would expand abortion access in the state. However, he clarified his stance and stated that he would be voting no, despite disagreeing with Florida's current ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. The measure, known as Amendment 4, would allow patients to seek an abortion up to about 24 weeks of pregnancy.
-Former Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney, a prominent Republican critic of Donald J. Trump, did not speak at the Democrats' convention, aiming to have more impact later in the race. Despite her commitment to defeating Trump, Cheney never took the stage in Chicago and has yet to endorse Kamala Harris despite repeated outreach from the vice president's campaign. On the eve of the convention, she posted a selfie with her daughter from a Taylor Swift concert in London. Trump responded by saying that "Liz has gone full democrat." Cheney has repeatedly pledged to do whatever it takes to stop Trump from holding office again, but has never taken the stage in Chicago and has yet to endorse Harris.
-The On Politics newsletter, a guide to the 2024 elections, has asked readers to share their favorite books about politics. Nearly 1,000 respondents responded, offering new reasons to read classics and drew out the politics in romance and fantasy books. The recent political moment has felt like a political thriller, with an epic co-written by Shakespeare and Clancy and a wash of the cacophonous political jostling captured by Richard Ben Cramer. The newsletter encourages readers to think broadly about fiction and nonfiction, with nearly 1,000 responding before submissions closed. The Times subscribers can read as many articles as they like.
-Gaza faces a new threat: polio, which has been stalking the population for nearly 11 months due to relentless bombardment. Under international pressure to prevent an outbreak of the crippling disease, Israel has agreed to temporary and localized pauses in fighting to allow United Nations aid workers to deliver vaccines to 640,000 children. Hamas, in a conflict where the warring sides have agreed on precious little, will also abide by the staggered pauses in fighting, which are scheduled to begin on Sunday. The Israeli military and Hamas are moving with relative haste to prevent an outbreak of the crippling disease. The first person to contract polio in Gaza in 25 years is Abdul Rahman Abu Al-Jidyan, who was the first person to contract the disease in Gaza in 25 years.
-A new bronze statue of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, the founder of Singapore, has raised questions about how the wealthy city-state perceives its history. Singapore's prosperity has long set it apart from many other former British colonies, but it also clung to honoring its former colonial ruler. Raffles, who is considered to have founded modern Singapore in the early 1800s, has been the central character in a larger official narrative that says imperial Britain had set up Singapore for success as an independent nation. Dedications to Raffles dot the landscape of Singapore, with a business district, schools, and dozens of other buildings bearing his name. Two eight-foot likenesses of the man loom large in downtown Singapore.
-Two Colombian soldiers who fought for Ukraine are now under arrest in Moscow after stopping over in Venezuela, which apparently extradited them. The arrest follows their arrival and disappearance last month in Venezuela, a neighbor of Colombia and a Russia ally. The extradition of Colombian fighters could damage relations between Venezuela and Colombia, which share close economic and historical ties. The war in Ukraine is creating geopolitical ripples far from the battlefield, as the Kremlin's campaign to punish its enemies abroad escalates. The arrest of Colombian fighters in Moscow follows their arrival and disappearance in Venezuela, a neighbor of Colombia and a Russia ally.
-Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed the head of the Air Force, Lt. Gen. Mykola Oleschuk, days after an F-16 warplane crash in what may have been a friendly fire incident. A Western official said that friendly fire from a Patriot missile battery might have brought down the jet, though mechanical failure and pilot error have not been ruled out. The dismissal of Oleschuk is the second high-profile departure this year, following Ukraine's top military leader, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, replacing him with Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky in February. Zelensky gave no specific reason for the decision, but said it was necessary to strengthen military leadership and take care of people, personnel, and soldiers.
-Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to visit Mongolia next week, despite the Central Asian country's membership in the International Criminal Court (ICJ), which issued a warrant for his arrest in 2023. The visit is scheduled to commemorate the 85th anniversary of a joint military victory, and will be Putin's first trip to an I.C.C. member nation since March 2023, when the court accused him of war crimes in Ukraine and issued a warrant for his arrest. As part of their membership in the I.C.C., countries are bound by international law to arrest people for whom the court has issued arrest warrants, though that requirement is not always observed.
-The FBI has released a redacted version of a 2019 report that suggested Havana Syndrome was not caused by hostile action but by "social contagion." Some officials argue that the report raised doubts within the C.I.A. and parts of the Trump administration about the root causes of the syndrome and whether it was a functional illness spurred by stress. People with symptoms of Havana Syndrome and their legal representatives have long disparaged the F.B.I. findings, noting that investigators reviewed records but did not interview victims. The report was one of the first to argue that the syndrome was not a result of hostile action.

THE NEW YORK POST
-American and Iraqi forces have killed 15 ISIS terrorists in a joint raid in western Iraq, leaving seven US troops injured. The operation targeted ISIS leaders, who were armed with weapons, grenades, and explosive suicide belts. The US Central Command (CENTCOM) stated that 15 ISIS operatives were killed, and no civilians were injured or killed. The Iraqi military said that airstrikes targeted hideouts and an airborne operation followed. The US has 2,500 troops stationed in Iraq and 900 in Syria to combat ISIS. A coalition of over 80 countries, led by the US, was formed to fight the terrorist group, which lost its hold on territory in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria in 2019.
-Amazon is reportedly partnering with AI startup Anthropic to power its revamped Alexa, which is set to be released in October. The Seattle-based company plans to charge $5 to $10 a month for its new "Remarkable" version of Alexa, which uses powerful generative AI to answer complex queries. The "Classic" voice assistant will still be available for free. However, initial versions of the new Alexa using in-house software struggled for words, sometimes taking six or seven seconds to acknowledge a prompt and reply. Amazon's premium Alexa subscription will rely largely on Anthropic's artificial intelligence, not Amazon's. Anthropic, a major force in the AI industry, has raised nearly $8B-7B just this past year. Amazon has funneled resources into its smart devices for years despite the division's less-than-lucrative sales. Staff hoped customers would buy the devices and speak to Alexa to make purchases from Amazon. However, most customers have simply used the smart devices to answer questions, play music, and set timers.

Electrek : BYD’s bold move in Germany could spell big trouble for Volkswagen

BYD’s bold move in Germany could spell big trouble for Volkswagen

China’s leading EV maker, BYD, is making big moves to gain a foothold in Europe. BYD’s latest deal could spell big trouble for Volkswagen in Germany.

BYD is taking over its distributor in Germany, allowing it to sell its cars directly in Europe’s largest auto market.

On Friday, the Chinese auto giant officially signed an agreement with Hedin Mobility Group to buy out its subsidiary, Heden Electric Mobility.

Over the past two years, Heden Electric has imported vehicles and spare parts for BYD to sell in Germany. However, the move will give it more control over pricing and other key parts of distribution. BYD will now be able to sell its cars directly to buyers in Germany and set prices on its own terms.

“Together with its retail partners, BYD will further extend outstanding customer services and warranty support in Germany,” BYD’s executive vice president, Stella Li, said.

In addition to gaining control of distribution, BYD will also take over two flagship stores in Stuttgart and Frankfurt, Germany.

BYD is on the move in Germany
Anders Hedin, CEO of Hedin Mobility Group, explained, “The foundation is now in place to scale up volumes, and we look forward to continuing this journey in Germany together with BYD as a dealer.”

The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2024. As part of its long-term partnership, Hedin will still act as BYD’s dealer and retailer in the Swedish market.

Although no prices were revealed, Germany’s Handelsblatt reported it could be in the “low double-digit million” range with outstanding debts demanded by Hedin.

BYD’s big move is part of its ambitious plans to expand in Europe. BYD aims to control 5% of the European auto market by 2026. Germany will be a crucial part of achieving this. However, as of the end of July, the Chinese automaker accounted for a minor 0.1% with only 1,432 vehicle registrations in Germany.

That’s a far cry from the 120,000 BYD aims to sell in the country by 2026. Perhaps, as Hedin’s CEO claimed, more control over pricing and distribution will help ramp up output.

BYD is among several Chinese automakers, including XPeng and SAIC’s MG, with plans to expand in Europe. Meanwhile, EVs from China accounted for just 9.9% of European electric car sales last month.

The move comes after the EU announced plans last week to cut BYD’s EV import rate from China to 17% from 17.4%.

Electrek’s Take
Although BYD has struggled to gain traction in Europe, sales are expected to pick up as new models roll out.

Taking control over distribution in Germany is a big win for the company. BYD can now set prices with more flexibility on availability.

According to the latest European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) figures, EV registrations in Germany fell 36.8% last month. The drop dragged Europe’s EV market share down to 12.1% from 13.5% a year ago.

Volkswagen was among those with lower sales in July (-2.2%). The Volkswagen brand had 6.1% fewer vehicle registrations with its market share slipping to 10.8% in July from 11.1% a year ago.

The lower sales come as Volkswagen aggressively seeks to cut costs. It’s even considering closing Audi’s assembly plant in Brussels, which would be its first plant closure in 26 years.

Meanwhile, Volvo led Europe’s new car registration growth, with over 22,000 vehicles sold in July, up 36.7% year over year. Volvo’s cheapest EV, the EX30, is the main growth driver, with over 47,100 models registered through July.

With the ability to set prices, BYD may be able to match Volvo’s growth. According to research from Rhodium Group, BYD earns 14,300 euros ($15,400) on each Seal U model sold in Europe. That’s even more than in China with a 1,300 euro ($1,400) profit per unit sold.

Even with higher tariffs, BYD has the flexibility to offer lower prices. Does Volkswagen have the freedom? It’s not likely.

It will be interesting to see how the deal impacts BYD’s sales in Germany next year. After topping Honda and Nissan to become the seventh largest automaker globally in Q2, BYD looks to overseas markets to boost growth.

WSJ : Tennis Is Hot Now. The U.S. Open Is Bursting at the Seams.

Tennis Is Hot Now. The U.S. Open Is Bursting at the Seams.
The tournament is taking place as the sport is basking in a broader cultural renaissance, with record attendance numbers and fashion moments to show for it

If you want to find some consensus among tennis fans at the U.S. Open, ask them how they feel about the crowds.

Young and old. Novices and lifelong pushers. Alcaraz obsessives and Djokovic defenders. All agree that the Open’s notoriously raucous masses have swelled like a rising junior’s ego.

“A couple years ago it felt empty on a Tuesday,” said Leigh Silver, 34, of Philadelphia, wearing a worn-in tie-dye U.S. Open cap, as she waded through the crowds to make her way over to see Frenchman Arthur Fils take on America’s Learner Tien. Every year, said Silver, there are just more and more people.

It’s more than a feeling: On Monday night, Open organizers sent a proud press release noting that the tournament’s opening day set a single-day attendance record of 74,641 people. Many on the grounds grumble about the tournament overselling tickets, jamming in too many people. But the last grand slam of the year rolls in as tennis is basking in a broader cultural renaissance. The overstuffed U.S. Open is wobbling with those aftershocks.

Yes, there’s Zendaya’s “Challengers” and Netflix’s “Break Point.” World No. 1 Jannik Sinner is doing his best Zoolander impression in Gucci billboards and Naomi Osaka’s mega-bowed kit is going viral. But many fans I spoke with laid the credit, or perhaps blame, for this tennis boomlet on social media.

“It’s all over TikTok,” said Michelle Aninye, 27, of New York on the second day of the Open. She had stopped outside the mammoth Arthur Ashe arena to take a photo (using, it should be noted, a film camera, yet another Gen-Z fixation) with her friend Bolu Johnson, 28. The pair cited TikTok-happy players like Naomi Osaka and Coco Gauff with boosting the sport’s cachet. “You’re seeing some of the best players be a little bit more active,” said Aninye.

It goes beyond athletes’ accounts. Dip a toe into tennis fandom and your social media feeds will quickly spiral into a deluge of not just scorelines, but videos dedicated coach-box chatter, rivalries and even (at the risk of being lecherous) player’s gym-toned bodies.

In the days leading up to the tournament, shirtless clips of top America players like Tommy Paul and Ben Shelton volleyed around the internet. The sport’s fandom has certainly evolved from just envying Roger Federer’s backhand.

“Challengers” got at least one thing right according to Nikolaj Hansson, the founder of Copenhagen-based tennis apparel brand Palmes. He was in town because his brand collaborated with Sperry on shoes, an occasion it celebrated by hosting people in a box at the Open on Monday.

The movie, Hansson said, sent the message that “tennis is a very sexy sport.”

He was not the only person to use this descriptor: “It’s sexy,” said Silver. “There’s definitely an aesthetic aspect of tennis that’s appealing with the prep outfits and following the player drama.”

There’s certainly some cosplay happening at the Open. Comic-Con has Spider-Man costumes. Tennis has nipped white skirts.

On the tournament’s second day, Janet Lee and Nathan Lian of New York, approached Arthur Ashe Stadium dressed like “Challengers” extras, he in a polo, she in a tennis skirt. “I gave him a color code, white on white,” said Lee, 26. Lian, also 26, almost followed the dictate perfectly—his shorts were more of a khaki.

They could be excused with picking a more Wimbledon-centric color scheme as Lee said her TikTok feed had been stacked with videos of influencers getting ready for that prim British slam.

“The fits are very cute,” said Lee.

That’s not to say that Lee and Lian were tennis noobs. They quickly rifled off the players they were itching to see: Alcaraz, Sinner and American top ten-er Jessica Pegula. And they’d been to the Open enough times for Lee to clock that the tournament now offered its signature vodka-based Honey Deuce cocktail on tap, shortening lines for this gulped-down $23 drink. Lee and Lian had taken advantage: each held a plastic Honey Deuce cup. (Though they, like most fans I spoke with, were only attending a single day, as tickets for the tournament have become increasingly, some say prohibitively, expensive.)

Harvey Rosen, 69, of New York, who’s been coming to the Open on and off for about 25 years, had a simple, deuces-and-aces answer for why the sport’s popularity continues to swell: The play is just darn good right now.

As his faded 2009 Open T-shirt indicated, Rosen has been a fan long enough to have seen the glory days of the big three, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer and Novak Djokovic. But he was thrilled by the play of Carlos Alcaraz in particular, whose rivalry with Sinner has added a new edge to the sport. As has Iga Świątek’s clay court dominance and Aryna Sabalenka’s walloping forehand. Also enticing American fans, Coco Gauff is defending her title at the Open this week and a handful of American men hover in the top 20 of the sport.

Vivek Ramaswamy, the former Republican presidential candidate, sidled up to a blistering match between France’s Adrian Mannarino and Belgium’s David Goffin on Thursday, his toddler son in tow. A self-described tennis fanatic, he said he’s been coming to the Open since 2006.

Over that time, he said, “we’ve seen a crescendo in fan enthusiasm and public enthusiasm about tennis because of rivalries.”

His thoughts on the crowds? “I love people,” said Ramaswamy, ever the politician.

Rosen was less enthused. The Open, he said, was “getting uncomfortably crowded,” as he skirted the crush by sitting in the shade outside Ashe, a cup of lemonade in his hand. Still, it wasn’t dimming his passion for the tournament. “It’s the best sporting event of the year,” he said. And he didn’t need TikTok to know that.

FT : Big Oil calls on Kamala Harris to come clean on her energy and climate plan

Big Oil calls on Kamala Harris to come clean on her energy and climate plans
Democratic presidential candidate has dropped her opposition to fracking but still supports green transition

The US oil industry and Republicans are demanding Kamala Harris clarify her energy and climate policy, as the Democratic candidate tries to please her progressive base without alienating voters in shale areas like Pennsylvania, a crucial swing state.

On Thursday, the vice-president said she no longer supported a ban on fracking, the technology that unleashed the shale revolution. But Harris's reversal has not quelled attacks from Donald Trump or US executives that she would damage the country's oil and gas sector.

The heads of the US’s two biggest oil lobby groups said the Democratic candidate must also say whether she would keep or end a pause on federal approvals for new liquefied natural gas plants, and whether she supported curbs on drilling imposed by the Biden administration.

“Based on what we know of her past positions, the bills that she has sponsored, and her past statements she’s taken a pretty aggressively anti-energy and anti-oil and gas industry stand,” said Anne Bradbury, head of the American Exploration and Production Council.

“These are significant and major policy questions that impact every American family and business, and which voters deserve to understand better when making their choice in November,” she said.

Mike Sommers, chief executive of the American Petroleum Institute, Big Oil's most powerful lobby group, said Harris should say whether she would stick with Biden administration policies that had unleashed “a regulatory onslaught the likes of which this industry has never seen”.

Trump, the Republican candidate, has accused Harris of plotting a “war on American energy” and has repeatedly blamed her and President Joe Biden for high fuel costs in recent years.

On Thursday, he vowed to scrap Biden administration policies that "distort energy markets". The former president has called climate change a hoax and his advisers have said he would gut Biden's signature climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act.

The debate over Harris’s energy policy comes as she and Trump court blue-collar workers in Pennsylvania, a huge shale gas producer that employs 72,000 workers — a potentially decisive voting group in a state Biden won narrowly in 2020.

Harris said in 2019 that she supported a fracking ban but told CNN on Thursday she had ditched that position and the US could have “a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking”.

US oil and gas production has reached a record high under Biden, even as clean energy capacity has expanded rapidly.

But gas executives in particular have been alarmed at a federal pause on building new LNG export plants, which supply customers from Europe to Asia, saying the policy will stymie further US shale output.

Toby Rice, chief executive of Pennsylvania-based EQT, the US’s largest natural gas producer, said Harris should lift the restrictions, which he argued would compromise energy security.

“Ignoring her anti-fracking statement four years ago for a second, can we talk about the recent LNG Pause that was put in place this year?”, he said. “This is a policy that has received massive criticism from all sides — our allies, industry and environmental champions . . . a step backwards for climate and American energy security.”

While Biden put climate at the centre of his and Harris’s 2020 White House campaign, Harris has been largely silent, and made only a passing reference to climate change in her speech at the Democratic convention.

“It looks like the Harris campaign has concluded that it’s safer to avoid antagonising producers or climate activists by skirting these issues entirely,” said Kevin Book, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners.

Climate-focused voters are less vexed than energy executives by the lack of explicit policy from Harris.

“Let’s be clear: the most important climate policy right now is defeating Donald Trump in November,” said Cassidy DiPaola of Fossil Free Media, a non-profit organisation. “All the wonky policy details in the world won’t matter if climate deniers control the White House.”

Last week the political arms of the League of Conservation Voters, Climate Power and the Environmental Defense Fund unveiled a $55mn advertising campaign backing Harris in swing states, focused on economic rather than climate issues.

In contrast, Trump has courted oil bosses who are backing his pledge to slash regulation and scrap clean energy subsidies. His campaign received nearly $14mn from the industry in June, according to OpenSecrets, almost double his oil haul in May.

(ZH) UCSF Researchers Identify Major Driver Behind COVID And Long COVID, With Po

UCSF Researchers Identify Major Driver Behind COVID And Long COVID, With Potential Treatment

Researchers at the University of California San Francisco have identified fibrin, a natural protein involved in blood clotting, as a major driver of the COVID-19 disease, according to a new study.


An electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2 (round gold objects), which causes COVID-19, emerging from cultured cells. NIAID via The Epoch Times

Fibrin binds to proteins from the SARS-CoV-2 virus to form blood clots that are difficult to break down, the authors found. This clotting then drives the various inflammatory and neurological symptoms seen in COVID-19 and long COVID, the researchers found.


Previous studies have theorized that blood clotting is a consequence of inflammation. However, the new Nature study, published on Wednesday, shows the reverse: that the clotting comes first.

“We know of many other viruses that unleash a similar cytokine storm in response to infection, but without causing blood clotting activity like we see with COVID,” Dr. Warner Greene, senior investigator and director emeritus at Gladstone and co-author of the study, said in a press release.

“Our study is the first to report causality for fibrin as the root of inflammation and brain pathology after COVID infection,” Katerina Akassoglou, senior author and professor of neurology at UCSF, told The Epoch Times on email.

By blocking fibrin using a novel antibody, the researchers were able to reduce clotting and neurological symptoms, offering a new potential therapeutic for patients.

Furthermore, the new study offers an explanation for the increase in cancers following COVID-19 infections. The researchers found that the abnormal clotting between COVID-19 spike proteins and fibrins reduces cancer-fighting immune cells known as natural killer (NK) cells.

Abnormal Clots From Fibrin and Viral Proteins
Prior studies have shown that a type of COVID-19 viral protein, known as spike, can form irregular clots with other proteins involved in clotting, creating blood clots that are hard to break down.

“We showed that the binding of fibrin to spike forms clots that have very high inflammatory activity,” Akassoglou said.

Researchers tested their findings in mice, infecting them with COVID-19 Beta and Delta variants.

They found fibrin bound to COVID-19 spike proteins to form irregular amyloid-like clots that are difficult to break down using traditional therapies.

The researchers found that the spike and fibrin clots would be deposited in the blood vessels, lungs, and the brains of mice, leading to scarring and inflammation, potentially driving breathing and neurological problems seen in long COVID-19 patients.

In the brain, COVID-19 infection caused protein deposits to be formed in the mice brains, triggering inflammation in brain cells.

“Furthermore, we showed that fibrin induces toxic inflammation, while suppressing NK cells that clear the virus,” Akassoglou said.

Mice that were genetically modified to not produce the right fibrin proteins had less inflammation when infected with COVID-19, the authors found. Their cancer-fighting natural killer cells were also more active at clearing out COVID-19 spike proteins.

The authors wrote that the reduced NK activity may explain some of the cancer and autoimmune cases seen post-COVID-19.

Clots Without Infections
The researchers also showed that even when there are no infections, just introducing the spike proteins to the mice could cause the formation of these abnormal clots.

Researchers exposed mice to subunits of the spike protein rather than the complete virus and clots still formed. They suggest that in long COVID, it may be the remnant spike proteins driving the disease.

While COVID-19 mRNA and adenovirus vaccines cause the body to produce spike proteins, the authors said that the vaccines would not cause these clots. “In general, COVID-19 RNA vaccines lead to small amounts of spike protein accumulating locally […] and the protein is eliminated,” they wrote.

They also point to a study conducted in over 99 million vaccinated individuals, saying that it showed no safety signals for blood-related conditions.

The study, which was funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), found COVID-19 vaccines were linked to few adverse events. Though at certain doses, people who took the COVID-19 mRNA and/or adenovirus vaccines had a slightly increased odds of contracting various clotting diseases.

Other clinicians, including Dr. Keith Berkowitz of Centers for Balanced Health and nurse practitioner Scott Marsland at the Leading Edge Clinic, disagreed with the UCSF researchers’ statements in the study.

Marsland and Dr. Paul Marik, chairperson of Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, said that clotting is a common adverse reaction some people may experience following COVID-19 vaccination, though few studies have evaluated patients for such conditions.

Nonetheless, the clinicians said that they were pleased to see discussions opening up on the drivers of long COVID symptoms and possible harms from spike protein.

Therapeutics for Clotting
The researchers of the Nature study designed an antibody made to target fibrin and administered it to mice.

Mice that were previously infected with COVID-19 had an improvement in their inflammation, scarring, clotting, brain damage, and overall survival after being given the antibody.

Giving the antibody for prevention similarly reduced inflammation and organ damage.

Common anticoagulants, which are medications that prevent blood clots, can increase bleeding risks while this antibody does not increase the risk of bleeding, the authors said. It is highly selective for the inflammatory form of fibrin and does not have the adverse effects like those observed with some anticoagulants, Akassoglou said.

A humanized version of Akassoglou’s fibrin-targeting immunotherapy is already in Phase 1 safety and tolerability clinical trials in healthy people funded by the biotechnology company Therini Bio.

Outside of the monoclonal antibody tested, Berkowitz, who has been treating clotting in long COVID patients, suggest anticoagulants like nattokinase which has been shown to break down spike protein in cell studies.

Research by Resia Pretorius, distinguished professor and head of the physiological sciences department at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, has shown that a combination of three different anticoagulant drugs, including aspirin, clopidogrel, apixaban, and a proton pump inhibitor, helped reduce abnormal clots and improved long COVID symptoms such as fatigue, joint pains, brain fog, and more.

Marsland said he found sulodexide, a drug not FDA-approved in the United States but approved in Europe, to be highly effective in treating clotting without increasing people’s risks of bleeding. Sulodexide is a drug that is used to treat thrombotic diseases and diabetic neuropathy.

RealClearWire : Alzheimer's Could Be a White Matter Disease, Not Gray

Alzheimer's Could Be a White Matter Disease, Not Gray

Alzheimer’s disease (Alzheimer’s) is conceptualized as a progressive consequence of two hallmark pathological changes in gray matter, in particular, extracellular amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles. However, over the past several years, neuroimaging studies have implicated micro and microstructural abnormalities in white matter in the risk and progression of Alzheimer’s, suggesting that in addition to the neuronal pathology characteristic of the disease, white matter degeneration and demyelination are crucial features of patients living with the disease. A shift to focus on white matter abnormalities, rather than gray matter, can open up critical new avenues in Alzheimer’s pathology and could be potential treatment targets.

White matter vs. gray matter

The brain’s gray matter is mainly composed of neuronal cell bodies. Nerve cells in the gray matter are where memories are stored. Networks of nerve cell bodies process information in the brain. These neuronal networks are necessary for thinking, speaking, and most activities. White matter is made up of myelinated axons.

White matter disease is the degeneration of tissue in the largest and deepest part of the brain. White matter tissue contains millions of nerve fibers, or axons, that connect other parts of the brain and spinal cord and signal your nerves to communicate to one another.  This 'talk' helps individuals think fast, walk straight, and perform other important cognitive functions. When diseased, the myelin, a fatty material that protects fibers in the brain, and the axons stop working and the brain and body halt normal functions.

Growing research supporting Alzheimer’s as a white matter disease

The observation that white matter abnormalities are characteristic of Alzheimer’s is relatively new. While changes to the gray matter in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s are well known and continue to be heavily investigated, the neuropathology of white matter abnormalities still remains mysterious and is mainly attributed to cerebral small vessel degeneration, inflammatory events, as well as loss of myelin and axonal fibers. However, white matter changes have been shown to develop very early, in prodromal phase (pre-Alzheimer’s) and precede the onset of clinical symptoms of dementia, underscoring the importance of their further investigation and focus.

A neuroimaging study in 2020 identified white matter hyperintensities, a significant contributor to Neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPS), such as apathy, irritability and depression, to be present in subjects evaluated with Alzheimer’s. Another recent study demonstrated that co-morbidities have an impact on white matter integrity in individuals living with AD and that early alterations in genes linked to myelin proteins in white matter occur in AD cases. These are just a couple recent examples of the growing data that support the vital role white matter abnormalities present in the development of Alzheimer’s.

The fact that most dementia remains incurable—including the cortical dementia of Alzheimer’s that continues as such a formidable threat to medicine and society—calls out for a new paradigm that may reveal new avenues to an effective response. Alzheimer’s as a white matter disease may stimulate such novel thinking, and can serve in a theoretical sense to broaden the clinician’s perspective in approaching dementia and its origins.

New hope for Alzheimer’s disease treatment

Historically, science hasn’t paid as much attention to our brain’s white matter as its gray matter.

We now know how important white matter is to our overall brain health and cognitive ability, as well as how declines in white matter structure are correlated with impairments in brain function. In the broadest sense, dementia must arise from dysfunction in or damage to neurons in the brain. However, the details of where, when and how the cognitive disturbance arises are crucial. Just as neuronal cell body pathology within gray matter is important, so is disease involving the segments of neurons within the white matter and their supporting structures.

Heightened consideration of white matter as a specific therapeutic target raises many new possibilities for Alzheimer’s treatment. Emerging possibilities for the treatment of white matter disorders can help reduce the burden of dementia that results from long-term consequences of myelin damage or dysfunction. An adaptation and adjustment to focus on white matter abnormalities, rather than gray matter in Alzheimer’s patients, opens promising possibilities for the science community to develop effective treatments for Alzheimer’s patients and potentially take steps forward in identifying a possible cure.