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NET Power CEO Danny Rice says a new decarbonizing process could open the way for utilities to produce clean energy from natural gas

Danny Rice helped build one of the largest natural-gas producers in the U.S. and became a billionaire. In his newest venture, he is still betting on natural gas—but this time as part of an unusual process that aims to clean up gas-fired power generation.

Traditional gas power plants spit CO2 out of exhaust stacks, contributing to global warming. NET Power, a company that Rice took public in 2023 in a $1.5 billion SPAC deal, has developed a gas plant with a different process, using the carbon dioxide it produces to spin a turbine and create electricity—a technology it says will eliminate almost all CO2 emissions.

A move toward renewable power sources reinforces the need for natural gas, Rice argues, as wind and solar can’t crank out energy around the clock. NET Power, he says, aims to offer utility companies an affordable way to make the grid carbon-free.

“It’s a whole lot easier, and a whole lot safer, to try to find ways to decarbonize fossil fuels than it is to move away from them,” says Rice, who is NET Power’s chief executive.

The 43-year-old, who lives in Dallas, has taken four energy companies public, and sold two of them for a total of $10 billion, excluding debt. NET Power is backed by heavyweight investors including Houston-based oil giant Occidental Petroleum, which owns about 47% of the company. Rice plans to capitalize on President Biden’s signature climate law, which includes billions of dollars in subsidies for capturing and storing CO2 emissions.

NET Power’s technology has yet to be proven at scale, and the first plants will be much pricier to construct than traditional gas-fired plants.

Still, utilities warn that ballooning power demand from data centers and other industries will require more gas generation to complement renewables.

“We are going to need to address the emissions from gas,” says Dan Bakal, a senior program director at environmental nonprofit Ceres. “If NET Power can deliver a solution that’s cost-effective, there will be a market for it.”

Sporting a stubble, Rice stands out among often gray-haired oil-and-gas tycoons. He says he enjoys staying at home with his two young daughters and doing jigsaw puzzles with his wife. The couple married in 2007 in Las Vegas, two weeks after they met at a Houston country-music bar.

He is quick to highlight unorthodox achievements, such as winning a hot-dog eating competition hosted by Rice Energy, the gas producer he once ran. But his self-deprecating style belies an ambition to remake the world of energy.

“He’s a new generation, and he’s a new kind of cat,” says Maynard Holt, the founder and CEO of energy research and investment firm Veriten, which isn’t invested in NET Power.

Rice’s entrepreneurial bent can be traced back to his mother, who ran food businesses near Boston and raised him and two younger brothers after a divorce. After earning a Bachelor of Science in finance at Bryant University in Rhode Island, Rice worked in Houston as an oil-and-gas analyst, before moving to western Pennsylvania in 2008 to help his two brothers start Rice Energy.

With a $5 million loan from their father, a BlackRock energy-fund manager, the Rices leased land around Pittsburgh and drilled a first well. They were soon drilling for huge volumes of gas and taking the company public, with 33-year-old Danny Rice as CEO. Rice and his brothers worked grueling hours, blowing off steam by riding electric scooters in their Pittsburgh office.

“I’d be telling him, ‘Let’s go celebrate and have a drink,’ and he’d say, ‘No, let’s go work on the next piece,’” says his brother Toby Rice, who was the company’s chief operating officer at the time.

Eventually, Danny convinced his family—including brother Derek Rice, who served as Rice Energy’s executive vice president of exploration—to sell the company. In 2017, they struck a $6.7 billion stock-and-cash deal for a sale to EQT, an Appalachian rival where Toby now serves as CEO after the Rices won control. Danny Rice served on the board of EQT at the time, and still does.

“We essentially became billionaires overnight,” he says.

After a hiatus traveling around the globe with his wife and children, Rice scouted for energy deals. He pitched his brothers on investing in biogas producer Archaea Energy, eventually taking the company public via a $1.1 billion SPAC deal and selling it in 2022 to British oil giant BP for $3.3 billion in cash plus debt.

Hunting for their next venture, Rice and his brothers pondered investments in nuclear, hydrogen and geothermal energy. But while they believe these technologies will be helpful in ushering in a net-zero emissions future, they concluded they couldn’t grow fast enough to meet climate goals.

Natural gas, on the other hand, is produced in huge, cheap volumes in the U.S. every day, Rice says. If the CO2 emissions associated with burning gas to produce electricity could be economically captured, the grid could become greener quicker, he says. That is why he set his sights on NET Power.

Durham, N.C.-based NET Power’s origins date to 2010, when 8 Rivers Capital formed the company to deploy a new technology it invented to clean up gas-fired power generation. Today, natural gas accounts for around 40% of U.S. electricity generation. At the time Rice approached NET Power, Occidental owned about half of the company, and other investors included 8 Rivers and Constellation Energy—all of which are still involved.

NET Power’s patented process consists of burning natural gas along with oxygen to create heat and a mixture of pure CO2 and water that spins a turbine and creates power. Some of the CO2 is reused in the system and the rest is sequestered underground—which means that a plant using the technology will emit virtually no CO2, according to the company.

A traditional gas power plant burns air, mostly made of nitrogen and oxygen, along with natural gas—which is mainly methane—creating a concoction that CO2 can’t easily be scrubbed from.

“These guys were pioneering and proving a new way to generate power,” says Rice, who owns about 5% of NET Power. But the startup lacked the heft needed to make a big dent in power-plant emissions, he says. “You’re sitting on the most important technology in the energy space, and most people don’t know about it.”

In 2022, he approached NET Power with an offer to go public, and convinced Occidental, its largest investor, to bless the deal. The Rices have invested a total of $135 million in NET Power via their family office, which includes Danny, Toby, Derek and a half-brother Ryan.

NET Power operates a small demonstration plant in La Porte, Texas, southeast of Houston. It has synchronized to the state’s electric grid, and is about to start testing specially designed turbine components. Meanwhile, the firm is building a roughly $1 billion commercial power plant in West Texas that is expected to enter operations around 2027.

Rice aims to mostly license NET Power plants to utilities, which would build the facilities and pay the company a fee and royalties to use the technology. In the U.S. alone, Rice sees a market for more than 800 plants, based on the number of aging coal, gas and nuclear plants that will need replacement. Other customers, including energy-hungry tech companies, could also benefit from using the zero-emissions power plant, he says.

NET power has achieved breakthroughs at its demonstration plant, but it remains to be seen whether the company can operate at a commercial scale, says Thomas Meric, an analyst at financial-services firm Janney Montgomery Scott. Another hurdle: convincing the general public that natural gas can be successfully decarbonized. “Acceptance of natural gas as net-zero [fuel] will be a very serious challenge for NET Power,” says Meric.

Price is another unknown. Net-zero electricity might be sold at a premium in certain markets but how substantial that might be is unclear.

Additionally, the company must secure land where CO2 can be sequestered and get permits to inject CO2 underground—potentially big-ticket items. In some cases, the company will need permits to connect to the grid, a step that has slowed down new solar and wind generators.

Prices are falling in outer areas where supply is high, but prime central arrondissements remain competitive and expensive

It wasn’t long ago that agents in some of Paris’s less affluent arrondissements were celebrating hitting the symbolic figure of €10,000 per square metre for the first time. It’s a rather different picture now. The cost of living crisis, stricter lending criteria and higher interest rates have combined to dampen prices in the capital — to the extent that falling, not rising, prices are “the hot topic of conversation between Parisians”, says estate agent Helena Hermanns of Leggett Immobilier.

Last autumn, the average price per sq m in the city fell below the €10,000 mark for the first time since 2019. Latest figures from the Notaires de Paris put the average value at €9,490 per sq m, a fall of 7.9 per cent over the past year.

“There’s been a correction in prices in neighbourhoods that shot up quickly [before and during the pandemic],” says Roddy Aris of Knight Frank. The most affected locations are in the east and north of the city, such as the 10th, 11th and 18th, while those with the steepest falls are away from the centre, closer to the Périphérique ring road. “There’s so much stock on the market here, buyers are getting picky,” says Hermanns. “Previously, an apartment on the fourth floor would sell quickly, now buyers want a lift — and they have time to browse. They don’t need to compromise.”

Yet this is a tale of two cities: while properties further out are plentiful and prices are falling, in the heart of Paris, a lack of supply and international demand are keeping the market buoyant and values high.

Although prices per sq m are generally €11,000-€13,000 in central Paris, average figures never tell the full story. “It’s a barometer price,” says Susie Hollands of Vingt Paris, who adds that it doesn’t apply to the areas that appeal to her overseas buyers. “You used to be able to find a nice property, say a one-bed in the Marais, for around €12,000 per sq m but now it’s more like €16,000,” she says. “On the Left Bank, it’s €25,000 and up.” At the top level, this figure rises to €30,000-€45,000 or more.

Many high-end homes are never advertised. “Some 70 per cent of the properties I handle are off-market,” says Hollands. In some areas that are traditionally home to bourgeois French families who don’t want homes to end up in the hands of outsiders, it’s difficult to find anything for sale.

In spite of the falls in the mainstream market, Alison Ashby of Junot Fine Properties/Knight Frank has seen sales of above €50,000 per sq m in prime homes over the past year, for example hôtels particuliers (period town houses) with gardens and penthouses with large terraces. In 2023 her agency sold two houses in the 16th arrondissement at €50mn-€80mn.

Overseas buyers in Paris rose to their highest level for the past decade in 2022 (the latest data held by the Notaires de France). “For the best addresses on the Left Bank, French and international buyers are fighting it out,” says Hollands. “The French often win because they move faster.”

Simon Colboc, who works in finance in Paris but previously lived and worked in London and Brussels, welcomes the vibrancy brought by overseas buyers. “I feel our city has a lot to gain from being more open,” he says. He knows families who have sold large, central apartments to a foreign buyer, “or a returning French entrepreneur or trader who’d made a couple of million in Singapore or Dubai and wanted to invest at home.”

At the top of the market, Tim Swannie of Home Hunts says interest is growing among Middle Eastern, American and Chinese buyers: “Views are popular, as are high floors, they’re quieter and brighter — but only if there’s a lift.”

The central and western 6th, 7th, 8th and 16th arrondissements — home to high-end boutiques and restaurants, embassies and elegant Haussmann architecture, as well as landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower and Champs-Élysées — remain popular.

“Americans seek properties with authentic Parisian charm on the Left Bank, while Asian or Middle East buyers look for perfectly renovated properties near the Seine or in the chic Golden Triangle [between Avenues Montaigne, Champs-Élysées and George-V] or Trocadéro neighbourhoods,” says Ashby. While large, classic homes are sought after, smaller properties in the right locations sell quickly too. “Small studios and one-beds appeal to investors, who won’t hesitate to make aggressive offers in a quiet market,” says Hermanns.

Agents say cash buyers tend to corner the prime Paris market, although Swannie adds that some buyers use a mortgage to limit their wealth tax liability. Wealth tax is payable for overseas buyers with French property worth more than €1.3mn, but mortgage debt is deductible from the valuation.

American Helen McDowell had owned a home in the south of France since 2016 before deciding she wanted a base in Paris too. “The Left Bank feels perfect to me, I knew exactly where I wanted to be, down to about two or three specific streets. Saint-Germain is such an iconic neighbourhood with amazing restaurants, cafés and shops.” After initially looking for a small pied-à-terre, she ended up buying a three- bedroom penthouse with a roof terrace and a view of the Eiffel Tower.

While the anticipated flood of bankers moving from the UK to Paris since Brexit is more of a steady trickle, it has had a wider effect on international demand with buyers from further afield choosing Paris over London as their European base, says Swannie. And, if a UK crackdown on non-doms drives some wealthy foreigners out of Britain, Paris is an attractive alternative with France offering comparable “impatriate” regimes.

“The pull of the luxury fashion world can’t be understated” for wealthy international families, says Ashby. But whether buyers are attracted by the fashion houses, the standard of education or the literary cafés, she says “there’s a neighbourhood for each of them. Paris is international, they feel part of the city.”

The Saudi Fashion Commission in collaboration with WWD will bestow the recognition on the Italian luxury company during the gala in Riyadh on June 6.

MILAN — Loro Piana is marking its centennial this year — but the Italian luxury brand is showing no signs of aging.

Because of the brand’s growth and being one of the pillars of the “quiet luxury” trend, Loro Piana will receive the International Brand of the Year Award on June 6 in Riyadh during the WWD x Saudi Fashion Awards gala presented by the Saudi Fashion Commission in collaboration with WWD.

The Loro Piana family began trading wool and fine textiles at the beginning of the 19th century in Trivero, in northern Italy. Pietro Loro Piana founded the company as a wool mill in 1924 in the country’s Quarona. In the mid-1940s, Franco Loro Piana started exporting precious textiles outside of Italy, an activity further developed by his sons Sergio and Pier Luigi in the 1970s, when they started helming the firm and expanding into luxury retail operations. LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton acquired a majority stake in the company in 2013, further developing its business over the years.

The brand is helmed by chief executive officer Damien Bertrand, who joined the company in November 2021 from Christian Dior Couture in Paris, where he was managing director.

Bertrand has seen expansion of the brand across retail and categories, while maintaining its luxury ethos. Here, some of Loro Piana’s most recent initiatives and highlights:

In February, the company unveiled its fall 2024 collection in Milan, expanding its offer in new and versatile directions, including statement jewelry and eveningwear — cue an allover sequin dress in silk georgette — and raising the bar yet again in its search for superior textile quality.

The brand’s “fiori di cardo” flower symbol — representing the thistle used historically as a tool to raise and brush cashmere in its factory — was turned into golden pins that closed jacket collars. The styling tip nodded to the way the late Sergio Loro Piana used to store jackets in his wardrobe, with the lapels closed and pinned to maintain the softness of the fold.

Fabrics ranged from cashmere and vicuña to cheviot, CashDenim and the exclusive “Pecora Nera” naturally dark wool sourced in New Zealand. The Sopra Visso wool sourced in Italy’s Sibillini Mountains was used in sophisticated yet rustic cropped jackets and ladylike pencil skirts.

For men, there were double-breasted tuxedos and plush shearling coats, field jackets, unstructured blazers and roomy overshirts.

The Loro Piana Record Bale leads to superior quality, contends deputy chairman Pier Luigi Loro Piana, whose passion and commitment have driven the brand to reward and secure the finest wool in the world. The annual Record Bale Award, which he established in 1997, has been leading to increasingly finer Merino wool fibers.

The award was once again bestowed in February and Pier Luigi Loro Piana, who holds the role of deputy chairman, said at the time that the recognition was “never about simply setting a record, it was instrumental in proving that we could evolve and improve the fibers to reach superior quality.”

The award was bestowed to two farms, one in Australia and one in New Zealand. The Australian farm, Pyrenees Park, with Pamela, Robert and Bradley Sandlant, secured a new World Record Bale with a Merino wool fiber of only 10.2 microns, surpassing the 2013 record of 10.3 microns. A micron is the unit of measurement of the fineness of a fiber equivalent to one-thousandth of a millimeter. For context, a human hair measures 80 microns.

The award ceremonies have been held around the world, from New York and Tokyo to Los Angeles, Rome, Milan and, most recently, in London.

This ever-finer wool can only be obtained from the shearing of a selection of unique Merino sheep raised by expert breeders, explained Loro Piana, “keeping under control the process of selection of the animals for years in a scientific way. These are long-term programs, it takes two or three generations of sheep and require constancy and long-term vision.”

The World Record Bale is preciously stored in a glass container at the Loro Piana Quarona factory in Italy’s Piedmont region, until the record is beaten. The previous bale of 10.3 microns can be now put in production.

The precious Record Bale garments are differentiated with a special label that documents their traceability, from the year the animal was shorn, to its origin, to the fiber’s micron. The company has vertically integrated manufacturing facilities.

Through the Record Bale competition, Loro Piana has created the Gift of Kings, ultrafine wool. The name is inspired by the Spanish royal family’s practice of gifting pairs of Merino sheep to other monarchs to honor these relationships. In the second half of the 18th century, the animals were taken to New Zealand and Australia, where the habitat proved ideal.

The company held the eighth edition of the Loro Piana Knit Design Award in May, hinging on the theme of “Fast Forward Heritage,” and the reinterpretation of knitwear.

Students Pierre Sauvageot and Björn Backes from the École Duperré Paris, tutored by Professor François-Xavier Herody, won the award — a gleaming silver ribbon-like trophy — for their project. Titled “Cavalieri, a History of Innovation,” it reinterpreted the armor of ancient knights with the use of Loro Piana cashmere yarns blended with iron threads, maintaining softness while adding structure, thus combining the natural fiber’s legacy with modernity in using the metal thread and the knitted armor’s contemporary design.

The winners were short-listed from a panel of eight applicants hailing from international fashion and designs schools such as Italy’s Accademia Costume e Moda; the Fashion Institute of Technology; the Institut Français de la Mode, and Tokyo’s Bunka Fashion College, among others.

The participating students were able to visit Loro Piana factories to discover production processes and stores and the winners received a scholarship, a contract to work for the company and the opportunity to develop their samples with help from the house’s research and development team. The final products will be showcased at the upcoming edition of textile trade show Pitti Filati, to be held in Florence from June 25 to 27.

The Loro Piana Knit Design Award was established in 2016 to reward talented students from leading design schools around the world who have been tasked with infusing innovation into the brand’s signature yarns, which include, among others, the Cashmere 2/27, Coarsehair, Supercashmere, registered Royal, Wish and Clan textiles, Sopravisso and Equilibrio.

In April, Loro Piana celebrated the work and vision of legendary Milanese architect and designer Cini Boeri on the centenary of her birth. “A Tribute to Cini Boeri” was installed at Loro Piana’s Milan sprawling headquarters at Cortile della Seta during the city’s Salone del Mobile, displaying Boeri’s iconic pieces upholstered in the Italian luxury brand’s most exclusive interiors fabrics.

The pieces, produced by Arflex, were installed in collaboration with Archivio Cini Boeri.

Some of her signature designs — including the Pecorelle [sheep] sofas and armchairs and the Bobo and Boborelax armchairs — were revisited in Loro Piana’s precious fabrics. The Botolo high and low three-legged chairs appeared in the brand’s cashmere and silk Cashfur in a special caramel color in a limited edition of 100 pieces.

This is a three-year project, with the patronage of the Triennale Milano museum, which will stage a retrospective on Cini Boeri in 2026. The Loro Piana Interiors division was launched in 2006, initially only aimed at professionals in the sector but now also open to end consumers. It is also present in the yachting and aviation industries and in the hospitality area.

Last year Loro Piana Interiors introduced a project in a collaboration with Argentinian designer and artist Cristián Mohaded, called “Apacheta,” inspired by the Andean tradition.

Advanced talks with NBC, Amazon and ESPN spotlight the staggering value of sports rights and could portend industry changes

The National Basketball Association entered its first TV negotiations in a decade with a problem: Its main business partners seemed to be on shaky footing.

TNT parent Warner Bros. Discovery WBD 0.73%increase; green up pointing triangle was saddled with more than $40 billion in debt, while ESPN parent Disney DIS -1.77%decrease; red down pointing triangle was battling a Wall Street activist over its slumping stock. Each company was reluctant to pony up the full premium the league wanted. But the NBA had quietly laid the groundwork with two other potential partners, Amazon AMZN 1.08%increase; green up pointing triangle and NBC, which pounced as soon as they got the chance.

Now, with negotiations progressing as the Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks prepare to face off in the NBA Finals, the league is on track to score big: It is closing in on deals with NBC, ESPN and Amazon that would bring in about $76 billion in media revenue over 11 years, people familiar with the discussions said.

The NBA sweepstakes has turned into a defining moment for the TV industry, highlighting the anxieties of traditional media companies about the collapse of cable and their uncertain financial futures in the streaming world. It has put front and center the paradox that sports content is outrageously expensive but also critical to own in an industry in which it is one of the few reliable ways to draw in audiences.

“Entertainment is a swamp, and sports is the only firm ground,” said former Fox Sports chief David Hill.

NBC is near an accord with the league to pay an average of $2.5 billion a year, people familiar with the deal talks said. It would show around 100 games per season, with about half airing exclusively on the Peacock streaming service, reflecting a major bet on the future of streaming. Games would air on NBC on Tuesdays and Sundays when there isn’t a conflict with NBC’s “Sunday Night Football.”

Amazon’s $1.8 billion-a-year package would include regular-season and playoff games, the new NBA in-season tournament, and the “play-in” games in which teams compete for the final playoff spots. It also would have a share of the conference finals, which the media partners would split in a rotation, the people familiar with the terms said.

Disney would retain an NBA package and would continue to air the NBA Finals, with payments averaging about $2.6 billion a year, people familiar with the terms say, up from $1.5 billion under the current deal. Disney would get fewer games than under its current deal. ESPN’s deal will allow the company to air games on its direct-to-consumer streaming service, which is set to launch in 2025.

Warner, led by Chief Executive David Zaslav, still has a right to match a rival package, and the league could always carve out a new package for the company in the final stretch, but its options are limited.

The deals would go into effect after the 2024-2025 season and would include rights to WNBA telecasts, as that league grows in popularity with the rise of rookie sensation Caitlin Clark. Owners must approve the deals, and any announcement could still be a few weeks away.

The deals are clarifying the media industry’s pecking order and could set the table for big mergers down the road. For the league, the deals would translate into a windfall that would help fund blockbuster contracts for stars such as Jayson Tatum and Luka Doncic in the coming years.

The NBA is on track to increase its annual fees by more than 2.5 times under the new deal, to an average of nearly $7 billion. The NFL roughly doubled its fees under its last deal to around $10 billion a year. The NBA has much lower average ratings than the NFL, but it has more games and a young audience that is important to advertisers. It is very popular abroad, which is a big motivator for Amazon’s Prime Video.

“Yes, there’s risk at these fee levels given recent ratings, but they are also looking at the downside of the games being on competing services. Which is worse?” said Brent Magid, CEO of media consulting firm Magid.

Bringing in Amazon

TNT and ESPN each had a chance to renew their NBA deals in a monthslong negotiating period that ended April 22. Though the negotiations during that time were supposed to be exclusive, the NBA had the networks’ blessing to reach out to Amazon to put together a streaming package, people familiar with the talks said.

Adding a streamer to the mix, and shifting some games out of the TV packages, was an obvious way to hold down costs for ESPN and TNT. And for streamers, just like TV networks, sports have become an anchor to help bring in subscribers.

By the time Disney CEO Bob Iger met NBA Commissioner Adam Silver at a mid-April event hosted by veteran media mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg in Montecito, Calif., the two sides were each clear that ESPN would wind up remaining a league partner, people familiar with the situation said.

The situation was different at Warner. The company had a chance to commit around $2.2 billion a year for a deal but walked away, unhappy with the price relative to the value of the package, say people close to the talks.

In Warner’s view, the league has taken too much valuable content, including playoff games and the play-in tournament, out of its potential package to put in Amazon’s.

When the April 22 deadline passed, Amazon already had the outlines of its deal in place. Comcast’s NBCUniversal, meanwhile, had long ago signaled that it was interested. The company quickly submitted a $2.5 billion-a-year bid for the other TV package.

The parties spent weeks haggling over details—NBC wanted the Finals but fell short.

NBC’s coming cuts

Executives inside NBCUniversal differ over the wisdom of the deal, with some saying spending so much on the NBA is a bad idea and others saying it will supercharge NBC’s streaming business. The long-term value of NBA rights will hinge partly on how many subscribers Peacock is able to sign up.

Pricing is also a factor: NBC would likely raise prices for Peacock once it has the NBA, a person familiar with the planning said, to boost revenue as sports costs grow.

NBC entertainment executives are bracing for significant budget cuts. NBC won’t need as much prime-time entertainment content, with the NBA taking that real estate a few days a week, and Peacock’s original content budget will likely be reduced significantly, entertainment executives said.

Other potential areas to mine for savings include Peacock’s content deals for movies and TV shows with the Universal studio.

The potential deal has created some tensions between the units overseen by Mark Lazarus, chairman of the NBCUniversal Media Group, which is leading the NBA charge, and Donna Langley, who oversees movie and television entertainment in her role as chairman of NBCUniversal Studio Group and chief content officer, people familiar with the situation said.

The company envisions that the NBA will ultimately help Peacock, which lost $639 million in the most recent quarter, on its path to profitability.

Beyond the financial benefits, taking the NBA away from TNT would weaken an NBC competitor and, in so doing, deal a blow to Venu Sports, a sports-streaming venture being planned by Warner, Fox and Disney.

‘They screwed this thing up’

Warner’s Zaslav, whose rocky tenure has been marked by steep cost cuts and a sliding stock price, faced a quandary in the NBA talks.

Without those broadcasts, the company’s TNT network, which has counted on basketball to drive ratings and revenue since 1988, could take a major hit. Cable distributors likely wouldn’t be willing to pay as much to offer TNT. When The Wall Street Journal first reported NBC’s $2.5 billion-a-year bid on April 29, Warner’s shares fell about 10%.

But Zaslav and his top lieutenants calculated that the ratings performance of the NBA on TNT didn’t justify a major increase in fees for a smaller package of games, say people close to the company.

Zaslav maintains that Warner can match either NBC’s or Amazon’s deal. Enforcing those rights might require a legal battle, and Warner might wind up paying a higher sum than it passed up in April.

“Turner decided they wanted to take a risk with an auction,” said Patrick Crakes, a sports media consultant and former senior executive at Fox Sports. “That made the rights more expensive.”

Warner is already plotting how to use the potential savings from not being an NBA partner to buy other sports content. It recently cut a deal with Disney’s ESPN to sublicense some college football playoff games. Warner executives note that TNT also has rights to Nascar, the National Hockey League, Major League Baseball and the March Madness college basketball tournament.

Warner would relish the opportunity to acquire CBS from Paramount Global as that company explores a sale that could eventually result in asset sales, say people familiar with the situation. That would help Warner consolidate ownership of March Madness, which it now splits with CBS, and it would make Warner a partner of the NFL.

The departure of the NBA would be a huge blow to the people involved in producing the games for TNT and the content that surrounds it, including the acclaimed show “Inside the NBA,” which features retired stars Charles Barkley, Shaquille O’Neal and Kenny Smith.

“These people I work with—they screwed this thing up, clearly,” Barkley said on “The Dan Patrick Show,” referring to company leaders involved in the NBA talks as “clowns.”

He criticized Zaslav’s remark at an investor conference in November 2022 that the company didn’t need the NBA to prosper. “Well, he don’t need it. But the rest of the people…who work here, we need it,” Barkley said.

BlackRock and Citadel Securities have backed a bourse hoping to challenge Nasdaq and NYSE for listings

A new Texas stock exchange’s bid to break New York’s dominance of US equity markets has met with scepticism from rivals, traders and investor advocates in spite of backing from BlackRock and Citadel Securities.

TXSE, the Dallas-based group behind the planned Texas Stock Exchange, said on Wednesday it would apply for approval from the US Securities and Exchange Commission to become a new hub for listed companies and the $8.6tn exchange traded funds industry.

It has raised $120mn from investors including the two investment heavyweights to meet the needs of companies and other issuers that were “demanding more stability and predictability around listing standards and associated costs”. 

James Lee, its founder and chief executive, added that TXSE would ultimately “create more competition around quote activity, liquidity and transparency, resulting in more consistent and reliable markets” to benefit of investors, issuers and liquidity providers.

The exchange talked up the attractions of Texas, noting that the Lone Star State has more Fortune 500 companies than any other US state. Its comments on listings were interpreted by many as a plan to offer standards less onerous than those required by the New York Stock Exchange or its rival Nasdaq. But market participants questioned TXSE’s ability to make headway in a crowded market.

There are already 24 regulated US securities exchanges — a group that includes options and stock markets — but while all offer trading, the two New York-based bourses dominate the business of listing new companies and maintaining standards for those they already host. A host of others, including IEX, have tried to break the duopoly in the last decade, but to little success.

“We’ve tried it. We’ve done well on the [exchange traded fund] side, but on the corporate listing side, it’s hard,” said Fred Tomczyk, chief executive of Cboe Global Markets, the US’s third-largest stock market. “If you’re going to try to do it on a lighter regulatory touch, I don’t know how you do it because we do have a regulator.”

“Does the world need another competitive listings venue for companies? My answer is probably not, but I wish them luck,” Doug Cifu, CEO and co-founder of Nasdaq-listed market maker Virtu, told Piper Sandler’s annual exchanges conference on Wednesday.

Cifu said he had turned down the chance to invest in TXSE because he was not convinced by its listings push.

“I think Nasdaq and [the] New York [Stock Exchange] do a wonderful job. They’re highly competitive,” he added.

Nasdaq and the NYSE, part of Intercontinental Exchange, declined to comment. One senior New York-based exchange official pointed to the history of failed attempts to break the NYSE-Nasdaq stranglehold, adding: “Most of that regulation isn’t coming from the exchanges; it’s the regulator.”

The San Francisco-based Long Term Stock Exchange launched in 2020 with the aim of attracting buy-and-hold investors and has so far listed two companies. It did not respond to a request for comment.

IEX, which launched trading in 2013 and a listings business in 2017, only attracted a single listing by the time it closed the unit in 2019 to focus on trading. That company, Interactive Brokers, returned to Nasdaq.

“Nasdaq and NYSE ask a lot that isn’t necessarily the best for companies. I understand their intentions are good, but it’s a lot to force people to do,” Thomas Peterffy, Interactive Brokers’ billionaire founder and chair, told the Financial Times on Wednesday.

A 2021 Nasdaq rule requiring board diversity disclosures by companies, and an explanation if their board is not diverse, has come under particular attack. In February, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit agreed to rehear a case brought by conservative groups seeking to overturn the rule.

Investor advocates, however, expressed wariness about a new exchange offering more company-friendly listing standards.

“Great companies from around the world list on NYSE and Nasdaq because they know it will help generate investor interest,” said Tyler Gellasch, president of the Healthy Markets Association, who noted that companies had complained about onerous listing standards “for decades.”

“It’s easy to see why companies want lower and friendlier listing standards,” he added, “but why would investors?”

Dennis Kelleher, president of financial reform advocacy group Better Markets, said: “Chief executives already have too many friends tilting the playing field to their favour; investors need more friends if the US is to continue to have the deepest, most liquid markets in the world.”

TXSE declined to comment beyond its press release. Citadel also declined to comment further, while a BlackRock spokesperson said it was “proud to be a founding investor in the Texas Stock Exchange to increase liquidity and improve market efficiency for BlackRock’s clients and other investors in the US capital markets”.

Both Citadel Securities and BlackRock have a history of investing in start-up trading venues, including the 2020 launch of Members Exchange, which trades stocks.

Developers are deploying batteries at a record pace as growing power demand threatens to slow grid decarbonisation

How the US battery boom is shifting the power mix

US developers are deploying batteries at a record pace, extending the limits of renewable generation as growing power demand threatens to slow grid decarbonisation.

On Tuesday, batteries delivered 2GW worth of power on to the Texas grid, the third highest on record, to help meet the peak in evening demand and offset the decline in solar generation when the sun goes down. In California, battery storage regularly supplies a fifth of power in the evening, according to data from GridStatus.io.

“We’re really getting to that hockey stick moment of exponential growth,” said Sergio Dueñas Melendez, the storage sector manager at the California Independent System Operator, the state’s grid operator, which has 9.2GW of storage installed. “Storage has managed to provide energy during the evening ramp . . . at lower cost than some fossil fuel assets.”

The two states are leading the US buildout of battery storage capacity, which is expected to nearly double its footprint this year to just under 30GW, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

“Storage is becoming increasingly significant, helping to stabilise renewable energy output and increase its ability to serve as a reliable base load resource,” said Jason Allen, chief executive of Leeward Renewable Energy, a large developer. On Tuesday, LRE signed an agreement with Pacific Gas & Electric to dispatch power from its Arizona battery project during times of peak demand.

President Biden’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act extended tax credits to battery storage developers for the first time, driving down costs for systems and helping turbocharge deployment to help meet the country’s goal of 100 per cent carbon-free electricity by 2035.

The addition of batteries is generating quick returns for developers while helping mitigate grid reliability concerns over renewable power. Batteries capture excess wind and solar energy and deploy it during parts of the day when generation is low, limiting the use of high-emitting “peaker” plants that deliver power quickly at times of high demand.

“[Developers] are recovering their investments in very short periods of time,” said Juan Arteaga, a senior associate at Enverus, adding that the role battery storage systems play on the grid varies widely depending on the market. While battery storage is making up a large share of generation in California, in Texas, it’s geared towards ancillary services, which covers contingencies and serves the grid during times of mismatch between supply and demand. 

Batteries could play an important role in meeting the surge in electricity demand anticipated from data centres used for the internet and artificial intelligence. Big Tech groups such as Microsoft and Google have made commitments to meet their power consumption with carbon-free sources by 2030, a target that’s difficult to achieve without batteries.

“It is likely that, in the future, batteries will be used not only for back-up power, but also as a buffer, as an energy reservoir, between AI compute and the grid,” said Colin Wessells, founder and co-chief executive of Natron Energy, a start-up developing a new chemistry of batteries known as sodium-ion to serve the data centre market.

But until battery storage systems achieve greater scale, analysts say burgeoning electricity demand will be met by fossil fuels. “There’s going to have to be a mix of generation used for sure,” said George Bilicic, managing director at Lazard. 

“There are certainly enough projects in the pipeline. I’m less sure if there are enough to line up with the timeframe,” said Brian Hayes, chief executive of Key Capture Energy, a battery storage developer. 

Other hurdles facing the battery storage sector are multiyear waiting times for grid connection and regulatory uncertainty. Last month, the Biden administration more than tripled Section 301 tariffs on grid batteries from China to 25 per cent starting in 2026, a move developers say will increase prices due to the lack of a domestic supply chain and China’s grip on the sector.

“When you combine the IRA with the 301 tariffs, you end up with a bit of a mixed bag,” said Andrew Waranch, chief executive of Spearmint Energy, which has battery operations in 11 states. “We would love to buy American, and when quality and price line up we certainly will.”

Data Drill

The US is increasing its production of solar panels. A new report from the Solar Energy Industries Association and Wood Mackenzie found that the US added a record 11GW of solar panel manufacturing in the first quarter. Capacity now exceeds 26GW, more than three times the capacity at the end of 2022.

The milestone comes at a pivotal moment for US solar power, the fastest-growing source of new electricity generation on the grid. Despite the growth in domestic manufacturing, the US is importing panels at record levels, and a group of manufacturers are calling for greater trade protections to safeguard the industry against a flood of cheap imports from Chinese companies, which have a large footprint in south-east Asia, where the US sources most of its supply.

Tomorrow, the US International Trade Commission will decide whether to investigate a petition filed by solar manufacturing giants, including First Solar and Qcells, calling for additional tariffs on south-east Asian solar imports, a move clean energy groups like the American Clean Power Association argue could slow US decarbonisation.