>>> Europe : Brokers Upgrades & Downgrades - 21st of June 2024

>>> Up
* Alcoa Raised to Overweight at Morgan Stanley; PT $50
* Anglo American Raised to Outperform at BNPP Exane
* Freeport Raised to Overweight at Morgan Stanley; PT $62
* Huhtamaki Raised to Overweight at Barclays; PT 44 euros
* Moderna PT Raised to $150 from $115 at Argus
* Severn Trent Raised to Neutral at JPMorgan; PT 2,700 pence
* United Utilities Raised to Overweight at JPMorgan
* Vale ADRs Raised to Neutral at BNPP Exane; PT $12.70

>>> Down
* ABB Cut to Sell at Deutsche Bank; PT 45 Swiss francs
* Atlantic Lithium Cut to Neutral at Macquarie; PT 21 pence
* Immofinanz Cut to Reduce at Erste Group; PT 22.50 euros
* Ivanhoe Mines Cut to Equal-Weight at Morgan Stanley; PT C$19.50
* Mondi Cut to Underweight at ABSA Securities; PT 1,475.90 pence
* Ryanair Cut to Equal-Weight at Barclays; PT 18.50 euros
* Wizz Air Cut to Underweight at Barclays; PT 1,950 pence

>>> Initiation
* Barratt Rated New Hold at Stifel; PT 460 pence
* Bellway Rated New Buy at Stifel; PT 2,750 pence
* Berkeley Rated New Hold at Stifel; PT 4,630 pence
* Couche-Tard Rated New Buy at Jefferies; PT C$91
* Herantis Pharma Rated New Accumulate at Inderes; PT 2.20 euros
* MJ Gleeson Rated New Buy at Stifel; PT 640 pence
* Persimmon Rated New Buy at Stifel; PT 1,650 pence
* Taylor Wimpey Rated New Buy at Stifel; PT 155 pence
* Vistry Group Rated New Buy at Stifel; PT 1,290 pence

>>> Call
* B&M Cut, PT to Street-Low at Morgan Stanley on Weaker Growth
* Rolls-Royce Re-Rating Can Continue, Citi Boosts Price Target

>>> What to look at today - 21st of June 2024

Asian stocks fell after technology shares dragged the S&P 500 lower overnight. The yen was in focus following a six-day slump which ratcheted up the risk of intervention. The MSCI Asia Pacific Index declined for a second session, weighed down by the Hang Seng Index, which fell as much as 2%. Mainland gauges also slid amid Beijing’s reluctance to step up stimulus. The dollar is set to rise for a fifth straight week. US stock futures were steady as traders geared up for the triple-witching derivatives-expiration day.  The weakness comes as the S&P 500 briefly topped 5,500 on Thursday before losing traction, while the high-flying tech group powering the bull run came under pressure. The Nasdaq 100 slipped after a seven-day advance with Nvidia Corp. and Apple Inc. leading losses in megacaps.  In Japan, inflation accelerated after the government increased renewable energy-related levies, a result that backs the case for the central bank to consider raising interest rates in coming months. Policymakers left them unchanged and declined to give details on paring bond purchases at their meeting a week ago. Norinchukin Bank’s CEO said its expected losses may still change after the firm earlier this week warned they may swell to 1.5 trillion yen ($9.5 billion), triple an estimate made about a month ago. The yen traded around 159 per dollar, its weakest in almost two months. That ramped up the risk Japanese officials will once again step into markets to prop up the currency. Masato Kanda, the nation’s top currency official, said that there’s no change in his stance to take appropriate measures if there are excessive currency moves.   Elsewhere in Asia, MSCI Inc. kept South Korea classified as an emerging market after a short-selling ban offset the country’s efforts to get upgraded to developed status. Thailand will announce steps to support the country’s stock market next week, comprising both short-term and long-term measures, said Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin. After coming close to erasing this year’s losses, Treasuries were steady in Asia. They had declined on Thursday despite data that mostly pointed to economic softening. New home construction slumped to the slowest pace in four years and the Philadelphia Fed Index trailed estimates. US initial jobless claims were little changed.  Traders will soon be looking to purchasing managers index data in Europe and the US for signs of improving economic activity and waning cost pressures. The US data will be the most influential for markets, with close attention paid to the price subindex, said Kyle Rodda, an analyst at Capital.com in Melbourne.  Wall Street will also ready for a quarterly event known as triple witching — in which derivatives contracts tied to equities, index options and futures mature — compelling traders en masse to roll over their existing positions or to start new ones. About $5.5 trillion are set to expire Friday, according to an estimate from options platform SpotGamma.  Traders will also be keeping an eye for signs of increasing global trade tensions as Western countries take steps to curb Chinese electric vehicle exports. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is preparing potential new tariffs on Chinese-made EVs to align Canada with actions taken by the US and European Union, according to people familiar with the matter. In commodities, oil headed for the first back-to-back weekly gain since early April as a surprise draw in US inventory levels, coupled with signs of robust demand, signaled buoyant conditions in the world’s top consumer. Gold was steady, poised to gain for a second week. US After Hours SRPT +36.4% on FDA expanding approval; RYAN +6.7% to join S&P MidCap 400; SWBI -4.7% lower on earnings.

Nikkei -0.08% Hang Seng -1.42% CSI -0.02% Shanghai +0.02% Shenzen +0.27%

Eur$ 1.0715 CNH 7.2874 CNY 7.2610 JPY 158.94 GBP 1.2661 CHF 0.8910 RUB 87.6303 TRY 32.8506 WTI$ 81.26 -0.04% Gold 2,365 +0.22% BTC 64,600 -0.69% ETH 3,515.50 -0.24%

S&P +0.08% Nasdaq +0.20% EuroStoxx +0.06% FTSE +0.15% Dax +0.02% SMI +0.29%

Macro :
- Elections Pose Last Barrier to European Prime-Office Revival
- *BULLARD SAYS HE EXPECTS PACE OF RATE CUTS WILL BE SLOW

Keep an eye on :
- AC FP : Covivio, AccorInvest Sign MoU for Hotel Property Consolidation
- ALO FP : Alstom Books ~€400M Services Order in AMECA Region
- ALO FP : Alstom ShareHolders Approve Splitting Role of Chairman & CEO
- ALV SS : Nasdaq Says Saab Joins, Autoliv Leaves OMX Stockholm 30 Index
- BO US : Boeing Nears Deal With Spirit AeroSystems: Reuters
- BOCH LN : Top Bank of Cyprus Investors Are Said to Explore Sale of Stake
- CTM SS : Catena Media Prelim 2Q Revenue EU12.5M to EU13.5M
- COV FP : Covivio, AccorInvest Sign MoU for Hotel Property Consolidation
- EQNE NO : Folha: Equinor will build its first hybrid renewable energy project in Brazil
- FCT IM : Fincantieri Sets €2.62/Shr Price in €400m Rights Offering
- ICOS IM : Intercos Holder Innovation Trust Offers 6.5m Shares: Terms
- IVG IM : Iveco Starts Initial Tranche of Share Buyback Program
- PBEE LN : PensionBee Group Holders Offer 5.6 Million Shares
- SAABB SS : Nasdaq Says Saab Joins, Autoliv Leaves OMX Stockholm 30 Index
- SAN FP : Sanofi Says New Data Support Potential of Hemophilia Drugs
- VAR1 GY : Varta Sees 2024 Revenue EU820M to EU870M, Est. EU869.2M
- VOW GY : BYD Mexico Plant Will Create 10,000 Jobs, Executive Says
- ZEAL DC : Zealand Says Petrelintide Trial Showed Up 8.6% Weight Loss, Zealand CEO to Bring in Big Partner for Petrelintide: MarketWire

FT : Elliott and Carlyle square off in $4bn debt dispute over software company

Elliott and Carlyle square off in $4bn debt dispute over software company
Clash over tech group Veritas portends future stand-offs between private equity and distressed debt investors

Elliott Management, the hedge fund founded by billionaire Paul Singer, has upended a $4bn debt restructuring at a business owned by Carlyle Group, in a stand-off illustrating the tensions high borrowing rates are unleashing at private equity portfolio companies.

Veritas Holdings, a software business Carlyle bought in 2016, revealed in a securities filing this week that negotiations with an Elliott-led group of creditors over a 2025 debt maturity date had reached an impasse.

Elliott’s push to use its position as a large debtholder to extract a bounty threatens a last-ditch effort by one of the world’s largest private equity groups to salvage a multibillion-dollar investment.

The clash stems from Carlyle’s decision in February to spin off a division of Veritas and merge it with Cohesity, a private artificial intelligence software company whose backers include SoftBank, Sequoia Capital, and the billionaire technology investor Brian Sheth.

Carlyle designed the merger to refinance Veritas’s debt without having to draw more money from its decade-old fund that made the investment but now carries little cash. It is a challenge faced by a growing number of ageing private equity deals that typically would have been harvested years ago. Instead, many such portfolio companies are facing imminent debt maturities against a much harsher interest rate backdrop.

Private equity firms are sitting on a record $3.2tn in unsold assets, according to consultancy Bain & Co. Deals with about $500bn in debt mature by the end of 2028, according to PitchBook data. Without easy dry powder to draw, more groups will be forced to engineer solutions such as the Cohesity tie-up that requires no new money to be found.

But these efforts will face a stiff test from current creditors including loan funds and opportunists such as Elliott, which can buy debts trading at distressed discounts and then seek to reap a large windfall. These duelling forces then turn into contests to see which side blinks first.

Veritas has been negotiating a multi-step debt repayment and exchange offer with creditors holding $2.5bn of loans and $1.8bn in bonds which it says will enable the debt to be paid off at about 100 cents on the dollar.

Elliott and allies which hold more than half of Veritas’ debt have countered that the terms of the proposed restructuring would still leave them short-changed.

Elliott has disputed the value of the package that Veritas offered, which includes less than 60 cents on the dollar in cash repayment. The remaining 35 cents to 40 cents will come from assets with fuzzier worth, according to securities filings and people familiar with the hedge fund’s thinking. Elliott is pushing Carlyle for additional upfront cash as well as a greater stockpile of the remaining assets.

Elliott, which famously prevailed in a decades-long debt fight with Argentina, is considered one of finance’s most formidable scavengers. Carlyle is a pioneer of the leveraged buyout industry, co-founded by David Rubenstein, and has counted ex-heads of state and captains of industry among its leaders.

In its securities filing on Monday, made public after the latest round of negotiations, Veritas wrote its offer was “highly constructive”, and it remained “ready and willing to work constructively towards a fair par exchange”.

A person close to the Veritas camp described Elliott’s brinkmanship as “terrorism 101”. Another person aligned with Veritas maintained the Cohesity merger was a “huge net positive for everybody involved” allowing Veritas creditors to avoid haircuts to their debt that once seemed inevitable.

Veritas has struggled since Carlyle bought it from Symantec for $7bn. Its debt has traded below 80 cents on the dollar, a level generally viewed as a sign of financial distress that Elliott viewed as an opportunity.

The crown jewel of Veritas, however, is its “data protection” segment that complements the Cohesity business. The companies have valued the combined businesses at $7bn.

After the planned merger, Cohesity is set to raise $3.2bn in new debt and send $2.5bn back to Veritas. Creditors of Veritas would then receive 56 cents on the dollar in cash. The rest of the payment to creditors is to come in the form of fresh debt issued by Veritas, secured in part by its equity stake in Cohesity.

The person close to Elliott, however, expressed concern about the value of the remainder of Veritas after it spins off its best business, and the terms of the Cohesity collateral, describing it as a “roll of the dice”.

Other Veritas creditors include BlackRock, Pimco, Canyon Partners and Silver Rock Financial, an investment firm funded by Michael Milken. Carlyle has expressed optimism that some of these parties can help bridge the chasm between Elliott and Veritas.

Elliott and several allies, however, have formed a so-called “co-operation agreement” that binds them to collectively adopt a unified posture against Veritas and Carlyle.

“Someone involved is frankly overplaying their hand,” said one adviser in the middle of the stand-off.

FT : Dan Friedkin, the stunt-pilot billionaire circling Everton FC

Dan Friedkin, the stunt-pilot billionaire circling Everton FC
US car sales tycoon and AS Roma proprietor owns Hollywood production studios and flew a Spitfire in film ‘Dunkirk’

Romelu Lukaku received a rapturous welcome in Italy last summer after signing for AS Roma. But the football fans thronging Ciampino airport were seeking a glimpse not only of their new Belgian striker but also his pilot — Dan Friedkin, the club’s buccaneering owner.

Now the Hollywood producer, stunt pilot and scion of a car-sales empire is in exclusive talks to buy Everton FC, the Liverpool club where Lukaku hit the big time, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, in a deal that would be the latest to propel a US billionaire into the English Premier League.

As private equity firms, sovereign wealth funds and the super-rich have poured capital into football, the buying and selling of clubs has become a spectacle to rival that of player transfers. Everton is newly available after troubled Miami investment firm 777 Partners failed to complete a takeover from British-Iranian owner Farhad Moshiri.

Friedkin’s wealth — Forbes puts his fortune at $6.1bn — stems from Gulf States Toyota, founded in 1969 by his late father Tom, which has grown to become one of the world’s biggest distributors of the Japanese carmaker’s vehicles and parts.

Its parent company, The Friedkin Group, whose revenues totalled $13.3bn in 2023, according to a person close to the business, also spans golf courses, luxury resorts and a safari company in Tanzania, although automotive still provides the bulk of the conglomerate’s revenues.

Born in 1965, Friedkin comes from a long line of aviator-businessmen. His father was also a stunt pilot, while his grandfather Kenneth founded Pacific Southwest Airlines, a pioneer in low-cost flight.

After a bachelors degree from Georgetown University and a masters in finance from Rice University, Friedkin took the reins of the family empire in 1995, succeeding his father, who became chair until his death in 2017.

Alongside the car business, he has made a splash in Hollywood. A co-producer of Killers of the Flower Moon, the epic 2023 western directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Friedkin is also behind film studios Imperative Entertainment and Neon, producer of 2019’s South Korean Oscar-winning Parasite.

And his flying expertise and plane collection won him a role in Dunkirk, the 2017 portrayal of the second world war rescue of more than 338,000 Allied soldiers, in which he landed a Spitfire on the beach.

“We got in touch with a chap called Dan Friedkin who owns six Spitfires and is a fantastic flyer,” director Sir Christopher Nolan wrote at the time. “We got him to talk about the characteristics of the planes, how they flew, what g-forces the pilot can really sustain.”

But the €591mn acquisition of Roma in 2020 brought a new level of international recognition to Friedkin, who despite his glamorous credentials is described by people who have worked with him as a “private person”. One said he is “very poised, not the first guy to speak but when he does he’s always adding value”.

Friedkin brings a similar passion to football as he does to aviation, according to one senior figure in the sport who knows him. 

“He’s not doing it for fun and games. He feels every ball that’s kicked. When you’re with him and there’s a Roma match on, he’s got it on his phone,” the person said. “He’s a master of many trades [but] he knows what he doesn’t know. His instincts as to who the right people are in football are improving over time.”

In his short time as Roma’s owner, Friedkin has hired and fired Portuguese manager José Mourinho, reinforced the squad, decreased external debt and outlined plans to build a new stadium. Lina Souloukou, the Greek chief executive of Roma, previously told the Financial Times that the Friedkins “see themselves as custodians of an institution loved by the fans”. 

Despite winning the Europa Conference League and finishing runner-up in the Europa League, Roma has failed to appear in Europe’s top competition, the Uefa Champions League, since 2019.

The club reported net losses of more than €200mn in the financial year to the end of June 2020. Almost four years since the takeover, it is still battling to be financially sustainable — although it more than halved its full-year net loss to just over €100mn in 2022-23, as revenues jumped by more than a third to €277mn, including net gains from selling players of €47mn.

Football Benchmark, the consultancy, values Roma at €574mn-€633mn including debt, and Everton at €519mn-€574mn. But Everton is constructing a new home ground, an asset that is a “huge attraction” to Friedkin, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

Everton’s finances have been precarious in recent years. The riverside Bramley-Moore Dock stadium strained the club’s finances at a time when revenues were plunging during pandemic lockdowns. The club, nicknamed the Toffees, took another hit when Moshiri was forced to cut sponsorship deals with companies linked to his former business partner, Uzbek-Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov, following the full-blown invasion of Ukraine. And like Roma, it has been disciplined over its failure to comply with financial regulations that cap a club’s losses.

Friedkin is conducting due diligence. “It’s absolutely not a done deal,” one person warned.

Friedkin has also taken an interest in the sport beyond the confines of Rome, sitting on the board of the influential European Club Association, rubbing shoulders with some of the most senior executives in the sport. And representing the ECA in its joint venture with Uefa gives him a key role in the company that manages and exploits the commercial rights of the governing body’s club competitions.

But his potential acquisition of Everton threatens to reignite debate about so-called multi-club ownership.

Fans fear owners will prioritise one club over another, while football authorities worry about the integrity of European competition, particularly when it comes to the possibility of teams within the same ownership group playing against each other.

Friedkin is aware of the concerns, according to the football executive who knows him. But while Roma has performed well in European competitions in recent seasons, Everton has not come close, making a collision an unlikely prospect in the near term.

“If Everton get back into Europe, it’s a nice problem to have. He’ll have created value,” the football executive said. “He might not get it right the first time but he will get there.”

>>> US After Hours Summary: SRPT +36.4% on FDA expanding approval; RYAN +6.7% to

After Hours Summary: SRPT +36.4% on FDA expanding approval; RYAN +6.7% to join S&P MidCap 400; SWBI -4.7% lower on earnings

After Hours Gainers:

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: None

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to news: SRPT +36.4% (announces expanded FDA approval of ELEVIDYS to DMD patients), CLOV +9.7% (Director bought $1 mln in shares), RYAN +6.7% (to join S&P MidCap 400), ASAN +3.2% (authorizes new $150 mln share repurchase program; also reaffirms Q2 and FY25 rev guidance), NG +2.7% (names new CFO), TREE +1.7% (hackers appear to be selling consumer data stolen from TREE's QuoteWizard on a cloud database hosted by SNOW, according to Bloomberg), OII +1.2% (secures large contract with domestic independent energy co), NBR +0.5% (provides Q2 update), DDOG +0.2% (launches Data Jobs Monitoring), GENI +0.2% (names new Chair of the Board), RKLB +0.2% (deploys satellites for Kinéis), OKLO +0.1% (stock offering by selling shareholders), JNJ +0.1% (submits applications to FDA seeking approval of TREMFYA for Crohn's disease), CLW +0.1% (to invest $23 mln in new tissue converting line), LMT +0.1% (awarded $283 mln U.S. Missile Defense Agency contract),

After Hours Losers:

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: SWBI -4.7%, ASTL -1.7%,

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to news: GEO -1.5% (announces discontinuation of contract with the Oklahoma Dept of Corrections), ARR -0.9% (files for 11,671,257 shares of common stock), DFS -0.4% (files mixed shelf securities offering), DAL -0.3% (increases dividend), SNOW -0.2% (hackers appear to be selling consumer data stolen from TREE's QuoteWizard on a cloud database hosted by SNOW, according to Bloomberg), INDI -0.1% (CFO taking temporary medical leave of absence),

WWD : LVMH Has Gobbled Up Legendary Paris Bistrot L’Ami Louis

LVMH Has Gobbled Up Legendary Paris Bistrot L’Ami Louis
The tiny restaurant with huge portions — and prices — has fed the likes of Marlene Dietrich, Bill Clinton, Johnny Depp and, of course, Bernard Arnault.

Topping up its far-flung hospitality holdings with a Paris institution, LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton has acquired Chez L’Ami Louis, a tiny bistrot with an outsized reputation, portions and prices.

Financial terms were not disclosed, but it is understood LVMH plans to preserve its unique character as the eatery marks its centenary this year.

Once described by The New York Times as a “small, shabby place with peeling brown walls and shaky chairs,” L’Ami Louis has fed many famous diners over the years, including Marlene Dietrich, who used to show up at noon on Sundays before it opened so she could enjoy a quiet, if filling, lunch.

French President Jacques Chirac hosted his American counterpart Bill Clinton there in 1999, while Hollywood habitués included Tim Burton, Francis Ford Coppola, Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp.

More recently, Spanish singer Rosalía tried out the restaurant’s burgundy snails, which swim in garlic butter, and plopped raspberries on her fingertips for an Instagram op.

It also seems to be a place where rivalries evaporate: Luxury titans Bernard Arnault and François Pinault are among local regulars.

Famous for its thick slabs of foie gras, roast chicken finished with goose fat and butter, and other French classics, L’Ami Louis also boasts a cellar of almost 20,000 bottles.

The restaurant falls under the LVMH Hospitality Excellence division, which recently added the Orient Express brand to its portfolio, and announced ambitious plans to add more trains, sailing ships and hotels under that iconic brand.

In recent years, LVMH has significantly widened its footprint in the hospitality sector with its acquisition of luxury travel operator Belmond Ltd., owner of the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express train and hotels including the Copacabana Palace in Rio de Janeiro and the Hotel Cipriani in Venice, for $2.6 billion in cash. Cheval Blanc hotels and Cova cafés are among its other properties.

Its flagship fashion and leather goods brands Dior and Louis Vuitton have also added more eateries to their flagship stores in key metropolitan cities.

In a brief release, LVMH called L’Ami Louis an “authentic Parisian gem” that “built its reputation around the generosity of its dishes and the exceptional quality of its ingredients. Produce is sourced from small breeders and market gardeners who have been loyal to the restaurant for several generations.”

The French group said it would “work alongside the existing teams to preserve the unique character and family identity of the restaurant and continue to support its French savoir-faire and expertise.”

FT : The Centre Pompidou prepares for a controversial revamp

The Centre Pompidou prepares for a controversial revamp
A five-year overhaul of the cultural complex will open up new subterranean spaces but is arousing heated debate


The Centre Pompidou in Paris was intended to be a building embodying change and transformation. A response to the street protests and the radicalism of 1968, it represented an idea of a less elitist, more accessible culture: open, public, responsive and novel. It embraced high and low arts; the avant garde and pop; performance, a public library and a panoply of new media. It has now become, however, like the Louvre, a heavily protected national monument, a heritage building.

The Pompidou was also never designed to last hundreds of years — it is a building of its era, heavily serviced and difficult to maintain. Its architect, Renzo Piano (who designed and built it with Richard Rogers between 1971 and 1977) originally proposed that it should be completely overhauled every 25 years.

Now nearly 50 years old, it is now about to undergo a huge transformation, its first since the 1990s and its biggest ever. An engineering project to restore the building, repair the structure, remove asbestos and update its services is scheduled to start in 2025. There is controversy over the original budget of €262mn (now looking more like €358mn), with funding as yet incomplete, and artists and cultural figures have expressed outrage at plans to close the Pompidou for five years during the renovations. However, the works will give the opportunity for a rethink of the uses of the building’s vast spaces, many subterranean and hitherto inaccessible.


An architectural competition was launched last year for this organisational and artistic reinterpretation of the cultural and administrative spaces, which was won by Paris-based architects Moreau Kusunoki with Mexican/US associate designers Frida Escobedo Studio.

While their proposals do not appear particularly radical (there will be no great changes in the appearance of the structure), they are surprisingly extensive. “The idea is to increase access, openness to the city and transparency,” says architect Nicolas Moreau. “There is a rethinking of the entrance, the sequence and the relationship to the city.”

Although it looks similar to how it did when it opened in 1977, there have been many changes, especially an accretion of walls, barriers and security checkpoints. After increased fears of terrorism, the escalator that was once a free public spectacle in its own right was put behind security barriers, and the interiors have become progressively less open over the years. 

“We are trying to open the flow of the ground floor,” Moreau says. “The piazza outside will be made more accessible, replacing steps with a slope, while solid panels on the facade (which were intended in the original designs to be glass but became solid) are being made more transparent using new fireproof glass unavailable in the 1970s.” Additionally, the glass box that houses a replica of artist Constantin Brancusi’s atelier (designed by Piano and completed in 1997) will now house the Kandinsky library, a research facility for the centre’s vast collection of artists’ archives; the studio will move back inside the building. 


The most extensive element of the plan is the expansion of the basement levels into areas that were formerly workshops or workers’ or storage rooms, creating performance spaces, black-box galleries and two new cinemas. Architect Hiroko Kusunoki says, “Those spaces have a very different character, with no natural light, so they lend themselves to immersive media.” Overall, the plans will lead to an extra 6,600 sq m being opened up to the public (there is now 18,110 sq m of exhibition space).

“There is a world down below the building, like a city below the city,” adds Moreau. “There was even a tunnel built to transport art, but it was not built wide enough for trucks so it was never used.” (It will remain unused after the renovation.)

The library, one of the centre’s best-used and most democratic spaces, will be extensively refurbished in collaboration with Escobedo. “Over the years the space had consolidated and become more static,” she tells me, “and the idea was to open it up again and make it more porous . . . We are trying to reconfigure the library so that it becomes an archipelago of islands which can adapt — a place for a future which we don’t know yet.”

What is it like, I ask Moreau, to be working on a building so familiar and so central to the cultural life of Paris? “It’s like being a heritage architect and getting to work on Notre-Dame,” he says. “In fact they call the Pompidou the ‘Notre-Dame des Tuyaux’” — the cathedral of pipes. As the real Notre-Dame reappears after a restoration necessitated by the 2019 fire, its high-tech counterpart will disappear, perhaps for far longer, under scaffolding.

>>> US Gapping down

Gapping down
In reaction to earnings/guidance:
  • GMS -4.3%, WGO -4%, FNB -1.2% (guidance)
Other news:
  • DJT -10.8% (announces SEC effectiveness of Amended Form S-1)
  • HAE -8.6% (launches limited release of venous closure device)
  • VNDA -5.4% (determines that recent unsolicited takeover proposals are not in the best interests of the company and its shareholders)
  • ARBE -3% (files for 11,542,497 shares of common stock)
  • NVRI -1.9% (provides 3 year financial targets ahead of analyst meeting)
  • TNDM -1.7% (Tandem Diabetes Care and Dexcom (DXCM) amended and restated development agreement to the original development agreement)
  • HMST -1.2% (HMST shareholders approve merger with FSUN)

>>> US Gapping up

Gapping up
In reaction to earnings/guidance:
  • ACN +7%, CMC +3.5%, DRI +3%, KBH +2%, SCS +1.7%
Other news:
  • TPST +44.9% (to Report New Data from Global Randomized Combination Study of Amezalpat (TPST-1120) in First-Line Hepatocellular Carcinoma)
  • HROW +26.5% (provides TRIESENCE relaunch update)
  • EVO +10.8% (speaking with advisors as decline in share price prompts talk of takeover, according to Bloomberg)
  • ATAI +7.9% (announces update on Beckley Psytech's Phase 1/2a trial of ELE-101 )
  • SLN +7.1% (Topline 48-Week Data from Phase 2 Study of Zerlasiran in Patients with Elevated Lipoprotein)
  • VUZI +6.8% (Vuzix and Avegant Announce Strategic Partnership to Develop Optimized Optical Modules for AI-Enabled Smart Glasses)
  • VZLA +4% (Announces Receipt of Court Approval and Expected Closing Date for Vizsla Royalties Spinout)
  • OPT +3.2% (A$55.0 mln ($36.9 mln) Retail Entitlement Offer Opens)
  • GYRE +2.9% (announces publication in Journal of Gastroenterology)
  • DELL +2.9% (Elon Musk says "To be precise, Dell is assembling half of the racks that are going into the supercomputer that xAI is building" )
  • MNMD +2.7% (Announces Constructive End-of-Phase 2 Meeting with U.S. FDA for MM120 in Generalized Anxiety Disorder)
  • TREE +2.3% (names new CFO, also raises Q2 revenue guidance)
  • PHG +1.9% (completes cancellation of 4.4 million shares)
  • BTG +1.9% (announces positive preliminary economic assessment results for the Gramalote Project; after-tax NPV (5%) of $778 million with an after-tax IRR of 20.6%) LXRX +1.7% (Data From Lexicon's RELIEF-DPN 1 Phase 2 Study of LX9211 Published Today in Diabetes Care, a Peer-Reviewed Journal of the American Diabetes Association)
  • VOD +1.7% (sells 18.0% stake in Indus Towers)
  • PLTR +1.7% (has been selected by the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to support the agency's mission to accelerate better health outcomes) LNZA +1.6% (increases share ownership of LanzaJet )
  • SNX +1.5% (CRSR and SNX announce new partnership)
  • BG +1.5% (announces sale of its ownership share in its sugar and bioenergy joint venture in Brazil)
  • ALDX +1.4% (Announces Advancement of New RASP Modulators and Recent Preclinical Data in Obesity at 2024 Investor Roundtable)
  • PLL +1.3% (announced that additional high-grade drill results at North American Lithium in Quebec continue to demonstrate the potential for a significant upgrade to the mineral resource estimate)
  • PBR +1.2% (provides information about FPSO Maria Quitéria; signs Protocol of Intentions with the Government of Rio de Janeiro)
  • VALE +1.1% (provides update on Salobo 3 plant operations)
  • GXO +1.1% (conducting an early-stage proof-of-concept program in partnership with robot manufacturer Apptronik)