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Nation’s spy agencies have long history of targeted assassinations

TEL AVIV—Israel’s intelligence services are preparing to kill Hamas leaders around the world when the nation’s war in the Gaza Strip winds down, setting the stage for a yearslong campaign to hunt down militants responsible for the Oct. 7 massacres, Israeli officials said.

With orders from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s top spy agencies are working on plans to hunt down Hamas leaders living in Lebanon, Turkey and Qatar, the small Gulf nation that has allowed the group to run a political office in Doha for a decade, the officials said.

The assassination campaign would be an extension of Israel’s decadeslong clandestine operations that have become the subject of both Hollywood legend and worldwide condemnation. Israeli assassins have hunted Palestinian militants in Beirut while dressed as women, and killed a Hamas leader in Dubai while disguised as tourists. Israel has used a car bomb to assassinate a Hezbollah leader in Syria and a remote-controlled rifle to kill a nuclear scientist in Iran, according to former Israeli officials.

For years, countries such as Qatar, Lebanon, Iran, Russia and Turkey have provided Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, with a measure of protection. And Israel has at times refrained from targeting the Palestinian militants to avoid creating diplomatic crises.

The new plans would mark a second chance for Netanyahu, who ordered a botched 1997 attempt to poison Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Jordan. The well-documented attempt instead led to the release of Hamas’s spiritual leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

To the consternation of some Israeli officials who want the latest plans to remain a mystery, Netanyahu telegraphed his intentions in a nationwide address on Nov. 22.

“I have instructed the Mossad to act against the heads of Hamas wherever they are,” he said, referring to Israel’s foreign-intelligence service.

In the same address, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Hamas leaders are living on “borrowed time.”

“They are marked for death,” he said. “The struggle is worldwide, both the terrorists in Gaza and those who fly in expensive planes.”

While Israel typically tries to keep such efforts secret, the nation’s leaders have shown few reservations about revealing their intentions to hunt down everyone responsible for the Oct. 7 attack, just like they did to those responsible for the Palestinian terrorist attack that killed 11 Israeli athletes and coaches at the Munich Olympics in 1972.

Israel is already working to kill or capture Hamas leaders inside Gaza, the officials said. The question now for Israeli leaders isn’t about whether to try to kill Hamas leaders elsewhere in the world, but where—and how, the officials said.

The evolving plans are an extension of Israel’s war in Gaza and a reflection of its intentions to ensure that Hamas can never again pose a serious threat to Israel—just as the U.S. led a global coalition against Islamic State militants who set up a self-proclaimed caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria. As part of the effort, Israel is also looking at whether it could forcibly expel thousands of low-level Hamas fighters from Gaza as a way to shorten the war.

Targeted killings abroad can violate international law and run the risk of blowback from nations in which assassins operate without their permission. In practice, however, Israel and others have pursued targeted killings and weathered the repercussions.

Israel’s plans to target Hamas leaders began to take shape shortly after Oct. 7, when Hamas militants carried out a brazen cross-border attack that Israel said killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians. More than 200 others, including American and Europeans holding dual Israeli citizenship, were abducted and taken back to Gaza.

Some Israeli officials wanted to launch an immediate campaign to kill Meshaal and other Hamas leaders living abroad, the officials said. The officials were especially incensed by a video of Meshaal, and other Hamas leaders, including its top political chief, Ismail Haniyeh, celebrating and praying at one of their offices while watching live news coverage of the Oct. 7 attacks.

Israel isn’t known to have carried out any targeted-killing operations in Qatar, and doing so after Oct. 7 could have torpedoed continuing efforts to negotiate the release of those held hostage, the officials said. Those concerns helped temper efforts to immediately embark on the assassination campaign, but the planning continues, they said.

Qatar has become the central hub for the hostage talks, with the head of the Mossad, David Barnea, meeting CIA chief William Burns in Doha earlier this week for more discussions. Doha has helped to secure the release of dozens of Israeli hostages held by Gaza militants in return for the release of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons. More than 130 hostages remain in Gaza, according to Israel’s account.

Netanyahu’s vow to hunt down Hamas leaders around the world has sparked a debate among former intelligence officials.

Efraim Halevy, a former Mossad director, called it ill-advised. Killing Hamas leaders won’t eliminate the threat, he said. It has the potential to instead inflame the group’s followers and accelerate creation of even worse threats.

“Pursuing Hamas on a worldwide scale and trying to systematically remove all its leaders from this world is a desire to exact revenge, not a desire to achieve a strategic aim,” said Halevy, who called the plan “far-fetched.”

Amos Yadlin, a retired Israeli general who once led the military’s intelligence agency, said the campaign “is what justice demands.”

“All the Hamas leaders, all those who participated in the attack, who planned the attack, who ordered the attack, should be brought to justice or eliminated,” Yadlin said. “It’s the right policy.”

Perhaps no other nation has Israel’s experience in carrying out worldwide assassination campaigns. Since World War II, Israel has conducted more than 2,700 such operations, according to the book “Rise and Kill First,” by Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman.

Even before Israel was founded in 1948, Jewish militants killed European diplomats who were involved in the British administration of Mandatory Palestine. In the 1960s, Israeli spies used letter bombs to target former Nazi Germany scientists helping Egypt develop rockets.

The campaigns have sometimes backfired.

In 1997, Netanyahu, then serving his first term as prime minister, ordered Israeli spies to kill Meshaal, a Hamas founder who was then living in Jordan. The Israeli team entered Jordan posing as Canadian tourists and attacked Meshaal outside the Hamas political office in Amman. One Israeli assassin sprayed a toxin into Meshaal’s ear but he was captured along with another member of the team before they could escape.

Meshaal fell into a coma, and Jordan threatened to terminate its peace treaty with Israel. Then-President Bill Clinton pressed Netanyahu to end the crisis by sending his Mossad chief to Amman with the antidote that saved Meshaal’s life. Israel then secured the freedom of its operatives in Jordan by agreeing to release Yassin, the Hamas spiritual leader, and 70 other Palestinian prisoners.

Meshaal later described the failed assassination attempt as a “turning point” that helped empower Hamas.

Israel continued its assassination campaign against Hamas for years.

In 2010, a team of Israeli operatives using forged European passports flew to Dubai, where they masqueraded as tourists while awaiting the arrival of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a founder of the Hamas military wing who led the group’s efforts to buy weapons.

Surveillance video later captured members of the team, dressed as tennis players, following Mabhouh to his room, where the Israelis paralyzed and then suffocated the Hamas leader. While it initially appeared that Mabhouh had died of natural causes, Dubai officials eventually identified the hit team and accused Israel of the assassination.

It took years to repair the damage to Israel’s relations with the United Arab Emirates.

It was the deadly Palestinian militant attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics that cemented the nation’s embrace of covert assassinations as a tool of government policy.

Palestinian gunmen with a group known as Black September took a group of Israeli athletes and coaches hostage in the Olympic Village, leading to a two-day standoff that ended with a failed rescue attempt by West German police. All 11 Israeli hostages were killed.

In response, then-Prime Minister Golda Meir ordered Israeli spies to hunt down and kill all Palestinian militants involved in the attack. The covert campaign was dubbed Operation Wrath of God and became the subject of an Oscar-nominated 2005 Steven Spielberg movie.

Israeli assassins spent 20 years hunting those linked to the Munich attack. They killed Palestinians in France, Italy, Greece, Cyprus and Lebanon. They used a remote-controlled bomb hidden inside a phone in France and used guns with silencers to kill targets in the streets of Rome.

Among those to take part in the yearslong effort was Ehud Barak, then a young Israeli commando who went on to become prime minister. In 1973, Barak, dressed as a woman, was part of a team that sneaked into Beirut to kill three Palestinian militants linked to the Munich attack. They killed all three in a matter of minutes.

But Operation Wrath of God also led to one of Israel’s most embarrassing covert failures in 1973, when a team of Israeli operatives killed a Moroccan waiter in Norway who they had mistakenly identified as a Palestinian militant involved in the Munich attack. Six of the 15 Israeli operatives were arrested and five were sentenced to short prison terms for their roles in the killing.

Two executives of groups linked to troubled Chinese shadow bank go missing

Financial conglomerate Zhongzhi is under investigation after announcing it faced $36bn shortfall

Companies linked to troubled shadow banking company Zhongzhi said they had lost contact with two executives, days after Chinese authorities said they were opening an investigation into the sprawling conglomerate.

Ma Hongying, chair of Shenzhen-listed early education provider Dalian My Gym Education Technology, and Ma Changshui, chair of Xinjiang Tianshan Animal Husbandry Bio-Engineering, could not be reached, the companies said in separate exchange filings late on Wednesday.

An investment arm of Zhongzhi owns a 30 per cent stake in My Gym, while other Zhongzhi units own a combined 24.3 per cent stake in Tianshan.

In their filings the companies said they “will pay close attention to the follow-up progress of the matter, and provide information disclosure in a timely manner”. They added the two executives did not hold stakes in their respective companies.

Their absence is the latest blow to troubled conglomerate Zhongzhi, which is at the heart of the country’s $3tn shadow banking market and has over decades built up a complicated web of investments in listed companies and the property market.

Zhongzhi has warned it faces a $36bn shortfall and in an open letter to investors admitted that it was “severely insolvent” and management “ran wild” after the death of founder Xie Zhikun.

Over the weekend, the Beijing police opened a probe into Zhongzhi’s wealth management units, accusing them of committing “crimes” and saying “mandatory criminal measures” had been placed on a number of suspects, including one surnamed Xie.

In the filings Tianshan and My Gym said they had spoken to the two executives’ family members and did not know any specific reason why they would have gone missing. My Gym and Tianshan did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Founded in 1995, Zhongzhi expanded from timber processing to property and finance.

Zhongzhi held a nearly 33 per cent stake in Zhongrong International Trust, a shadow banking financier, as of the end of 2022. Zhongrong’s exposure to the property sector accounts for about 18 per cent of its total portfolio at the end of 2020, up from 6.6 per cent in 2017, according to Zhongrong’s financial statements.

Zhongrong stopped making payments on some of its investment products this year, prompting complaints to the regulators.

FT : Brookfield raises $28bn for largest-ever infrastructure fund

Investors seeking shelter from inflation plough money into airports, toll roads and pipelines

Canadian private capital group Brookfield has raised a record-sized $28bn infrastructure fund as institutional investors plough cash into strategies they expect will benefit from higher interest rates and a shift away from globalisation.

The fund, raised by the group’s Brookfield Infrastructure Partners arm, is the largest-ever dedicated to investing in assets such as airports, toll roads, pipelines and natural gas export plants. It is also the biggest fund ever raised by Brookfield, which manages $850bn across sectors spanning real estate, credit and insurance, renewable energy and corporate buyouts.

The record haul comes as other large asset managers including Blackstone and KKR, and specialised infrastructure investors such as Global Infrastructure Partners, have raised substantial new funds or are setting ambitious goals for new funds. GIP is targeting $25bn for its latest infrastructure fund, while Blackstone has set a goal to manage more than $100bn in infrastructure.

Since last year, when central banks began to drive up global interest rates in an effort to tamp down inflation, many institutional investors have treated infrastructure as a haven from rising price trends. The assets often generate revenues indexed to inflation, even as they are financed with fixed-rate debt.

By contrast, higher interest rates have created new challenges for traditional corporate buyouts. Leading private equity firms have recently pared fundraising goals for such deals as investor enthusiasm weakens.

Sam Pollock, chief executive of Brookfield’s infrastructure investment arm, told the Financial Times that he believes a “deglobalising” world, where large companies are bringing production closer to home and sourcing their energy needs from geopolitical allies, has dramatically expanded the pool of potential infrastructure investments.

“I think there’s a huge amount of opportunity to deploy capital that should soak up any money coming in.”

The reshoring of critical industries such as energy and semiconductors to the US, Pollock said, “requires a ton of new capital to reinforce supply chains and energy infrastructure”.

Pollock also said $1tn will be need to be invested to “rewire all of the digital infrastructure around the world” with new data centres and fibre and tower communications networks.

Alternative asset managers have increasingly been helping companies to hive off large infrastructure assets in need of heavy new investment outside of their balance sheets. Brookfield has struck infrastructure investments with groups including Intel, Deutsche Telekom and Reliance Industries to build assets ranging from semiconductor fabrication plants to fibre networks and cell towers.

In the fundraising, Brookfield took in $28bn for its fifth flagship infrastructure fund, more than a $25bn goal it set when it began to raise money last year, and 40 per cent more than a prior fund raised in 2020.

Roughly 200 large institutional investors such as pensions and sovereign wealth funds contributed $21bn to the fund, while Brookfield will invest $7bn through cash on hand and the issuance of new stock. It also raised $2bn from separate vehicles that will co-invest alongside the fund, bringing the total amount of capital raised to $30bn.

The nuclear power renaissance has some way to run

EDF is vowing to build one reactor a year but challenges range from funding to a lack of skilled workers

When France first hosted a nuclear power trade fair about a decade ago, in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, it was a low-key affair. Two years ago, organisers’ main worry was to avoid anti-nuclear protesters marring proceedings. 

This week, the buzz at the vast salon on the outskirts of Paris was unequivocal. Miss America 2023, a nuclear engineering student, was on hand to help the event court the limelight, and champagne flowed on the stands displaying radioprotective gloves and designs for cutting-edge small reactors. 

The message was clear: nuclear power is back, and France, Europe’s atomic power champion with its 56 reactors, intends to be at the heart of this revival.

“We’re coming out of a period of taboos [over nuclear],” said Sylvie Bermann, a former French ambassador to China and Russia who heads the Paris show.

The industry and its low-emission technology would also have its moment for the first time at the COP28 climate summit in the United Arab Emirates, with a dedicated event, she added.

After years in the doldrums, mindsets over nuclear have shifted, spurred by climate worries and an energy crisis last year when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and cut gas supplies to Europe. Even Japan, home to the Fukushima meltdown of 2011, has restarted idled reactors, while a host of other nations are considering new plants, giving suppliers reasons to feel more optimistic.

What is less obvious will be the move from aspirations to reality, in a sector where building reactors is costly and slow, especially after decades without projects drained the industry of skilled workers. 

Part of the promotional push by France and other pro-nuclear nations is aimed at solving some big obstacles. Chief among them, according to the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog Rafael Grossi, is the financing, including from multilateral bodies. 

Paris, which is riding high on recent EU wins to gain some subsidies for its existing plants, originally opposed by staunchly anti-nuclear Germany, has campaigned for instance for the European Investment Bank to help fund the construction of new reactors.

“Nuclear has been constructed very fast when the money’s there,” said the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Grossi, citing the United Arab Emirates, which had gone from “zero to champions” in roughly eight years with a $20bn-plus project for four Korean-built reactors. They are almost all now online. 

There’s also a lot to prove on the industrial front. France’s state-controlled nuclear power operator EDF aims to build roughly one 1.6 Gigawatt reactor a year once it gets going with its new orders for at least six new ones in France by the mid-2030s, according to chief executive Luc Rémont. 

Considering its prototype in northern France known as Flamanville 3 has been 16 years in the making, it is an extremely ambitious goal. Rémont argues that parallel projects (the state-owned group is bidding for projects in India and the Czech Republic) would help EDF become better and faster. 

There are other challenges. Many nations have long been dependent on Russian nuclear fuel, including the US reactor fleet, and finding sufficient alternative supplies could take years. 

Meanwhile, the IAEA forecasts that over the next 20 years the industry’s share in the global energy mix — roughly 10 per cent of the world’s electricity generation today — will remain flat, if not decrease slightly, unless there are even more ambitious construction plans.

Developers argue, however, that the hardest battle is getting political buy-in to give them the visibility they need. Judging by the upbeat messaging coming out of Paris this week, that part of the complex nuclear equation at least is some way towards being solved.

Thames Water owners pile group with debt

Shareholders structured a £500mn cash injection as a loan charging an 8% interest

The owners of Thames Water lent the £500mn that the utility later presented as “new equity funding”, in a move that will raise further concerns over the financial stability of Britain’s largest provider of water and sewage services.

The unregulated parent company of Thames Water in March received a £500mn loan from its shareholders — charging 8 per cent annual interest — in an arrangement that highlights the complicated structure of water company ownership.

Thames Water, which supplies water to about 25 per cent of the population in England, presented the loan in March as “£500mn of new equity funding from its shareholders” to improve “leakage and river health” and deliver a turnaround plan.

However, the recapitalisation involved the owners — which include sovereign wealth, private equity and pension funds — providing a £515mn convertible loan to Thames Water’s parent entity, Kemble Water, according to the company’s accounts.

Kemble then “cascaded” £500mn of this borrowed money down the chain of holding companies that own Thames Water into the regulated utility.

The £515mn increase in debt at Kemble has pushed the group’s consolidated borrowings to over £18bn, having risen from just over £15bn as of March 31 2022. While the loan could convert to equity in the future, it is treated as a liability in Kemble’s accounts.

The arrangement will add to concerns over the financial future of London’s water provider. The company was plunged into turmoil after Sarah Bentley, the chief executive, abruptly quit after a boardroom row in June. Cathryn Ross, a former head of regulator Ofwat, is acting as interim head until the company appoints a new chief executive early in the new year.

The utility is now under close watch by the government, which is on standby for a temporary nationalisation in case it collapses. It is also seeking approval from Ofwat to be allowed to increase customer bills by around 40 per cent — before inflation — by 2030.

Dr Kate Bayliss, research associate and water expert at Soas University of London, said it was “outrageous that both Thames Water and Ofwat led us to believe that the company was getting £500mn of new equity investment when it was in fact just a loan”. 

“It’s not surprising that shareholders want to protect their money but it makes it unclear how much — if any — is going to reach frontline services, and what is likely to happen to the additional funds raised from shareholder bills.” 

Kemble Water has no income other than dividends from Thames Water, meaning any interest payments on the loan may ultimately be borne by customers through their bills. Thames Water is already struggling with high interest rates on its debt, more than half of which is linked to inflation, as well as rising energy and staff costs.

The company says it will need more shareholder funding to deliver its turnaround plan, cut sewage, improve leakage and reduce the likelihood of water shortages during dry spells. Thousands of customers in west London were left without water for several days in September because of failures at water treatment works. 

The company says it has a conditional agreement from shareholders to invest an extra £750mn in equity by 2025, and says it requires a further £2.5bn by 2030. 

However, its largest investor, the pension fund Omers, took a 30 per cent write down on its Thames Water stake last year, raising concerns over investors’ willingness to put more cash into the business. 

Omers did not respond to a request seeking comment. USS, another large shareholder, declined to comment.

Investors, which include sovereign wealth funds, have asked for a number of conditions to be met in order for them to invest equity including restrictions on regulatory fines, improvements to the allowed rate of returns and increases to bills. 

Tim Whittaker, head of data at Edhecinfra and Private Assets, a research institute, said the “loans wouldn’t do anything to significantly de-lever Thames’ balance sheet, which has been one of the core risks investors have had to reprice recently”. 

Whittaker added that it is “unclear if these repayments would be blocked” by Ofwat under new licence agreements that take effect in 2025 and which are meant to restrict underperforming monopolies’ ability to pay dividends.

Thames Water said: “We are extremely fortunate to have such supportive shareholders. Their commitment to delivering Thames’ turnaround and life’s essential service is reflected in the largest shareholder support package ever proposed in the UK water sector, whilst taking no dividends out.” 

“Our audited 2022/2023 annual report and accounts record that £500mn was invested by shareholders into the business.”

 Ofwat said: “Thames Water must address their operational shortcomings and strengthen their financial resilience. The recent injection of £500mn new equity into the business is welcome in that regard. All dividends paid by the regulated company must be declared in accordance with company law and the terms of their licence. We have new powers to take enforcement action against companies that break the rules.”

Thames Water was formerly majority owned by the asset manager Macquarie, which raised its debt from £3.4bn in 2007 to £10.8bn when it sold the business in 2017.