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DÉCRYPTAGE - Si certains redoutent l’émergence d’une nouvelle pandémie, les spécialistes sont globalement rassurants. L’OMS a toutefois demandé à la Chine de fournir davantage d’informations.

Quatre ans après le début de la pandémie de Covid-19, une nouvelle épidémie de « maladie respiratoire non diagnostiquée » sévit en Chine, pays qui a vu émerger le coronavirus. De quoi raviver de mauvais souvenirs. Que sait-on, et faut-il s’inquiéter ?

Mercredi, l'Organisation mondiale de la Santé a indiqué avoir demandé aux autorités chinoises des informations plus détaillées alors que ni le Centre chinois pour le contrôle et la prévention des maladies, ni le ministère de la Santé en Chine ne mentionnent encore rien à ce sujet sur la version en anglais de leurs sites internet.

Pas de chiffres communiqués

En réalité, l'épidémie n’a pas brutalement démarré cette semaine. Le 12 octobre, des pédiatres chinois alertaient dans le Global Times (un journal affilié au Parti Communiste Chinois) sur une augmentation des cas d’infection à Mycoplasma pneumoniae, une bactérie présente partout dans le monde et responsable de cas de pneumonie chez l’enfant et le jeune adulte.

Il y a 10 jours, les autorités chinoises avaient, lors d'une conférence de presse, expliqué ces cas par la levée des restrictions liées au Covid-19 et à la circulation de plusieurs pathogènes (grippe, virus de la bronchiolite, Covid-19 et Mycoplasma pneumoniae). « Une recrudescence de Mycoplasma pneumoniae a été détectée depuis trois mois, mais la circulation de cette bactérie est en phase déclinante », a indiqué jeudi au Global Times le directeur adjoint du centre de prévention épidémique de la ville de Pékin.

Même jour à Pékin, lors de son point presse quotidien, le porte-parole du ministère des affaires étrangères a botté en touche face aux questions des journalistes, les renvoyant vers les « autorités compétentes », selon son habitude. La Commission nationale de Santé a prodigué quelques conseils aux parents inquiets, appelant à la vigilance mais sur un ton rassurant.

Pour l'heure, aucun chiffre n'a été divulgué à l'échelle nationale, mais plusieurs services pédiatriques sont « sous haute pression », comme à Tianjin ou Shenyang, deux villes respectivement éloignées de 150 et 700 kilomètres de Pékin. Dans la capitale, l'hôpital de l'Aviation a vu bondir de « 30 à 50 % » la fréquentation de son service pédiatrique par rapport à la même période des années passées, selon le Global Times.

Une bactérie qui fait son grand retour

Cette épidémie signalée par la Société internationale des maladies infectieuses (ISID) est-elle due à un ou des virus connus, ou à un nouvel agent pathogène, comme l’était le Sars-CoV-2 en 2019 ? Précisons que ce type d’alertes de la part de ce réseau de surveillance n’est pas rare, et que la plupart ne débouchent pas sur des épidémies d’ampleur. Depuis début 2022, l’ISID a réalisé pas moins de 9 signalements pour des infections respiratoires « non diagnostiquées », dont aucun ne s’est révélé être lié à un virus émergent.

Interrogée par Le Figaro, le Pr Cécile Bébéar, chef du service de bactériologie du CHU de Bordeaux et responsable du laboratoire expert sur les mycoplasmes humains, penche pour une épidémie de Mycoplasma pneumoniae. « C’est une bactérie qui sévit de manière périodique tous les 3 à 7 ans, cela dépend des pays et des périodes. Avec la pandémie de Covid-19, elle a complètement disparu des radars. Mais depuis le début de l’année, nous constatons une résurgence dans de nombreux pays, et cela s’accélère », explique le médecin, coauteure d’une vaste étude qui vient de paraître sur ce sujet.

En France aussi, des cas ont récemment été signalés, notamment en Île-de-France et dans la région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. « La population cible, c’est-à-dire les enfants de 5 à 10 ans et les jeunes adultes, sont naïfs en termes d’immunité puisqu’ils n’ont pas été en contact avec la bactérie depuis plusieurs années », explique la spécialiste.

Pas de restriction sanitaire cet hiver

Le Pr Bébéar se veut cependant rassurante. « La forme la plus fréquente de cette maladie n’est absolument pas grave et se soigne très bien avec des antibiotiques, ou peut même guérir spontanément. » Les patients sont quasiment toujours pris en charge en ville, et non à l’hôpital. Mais alors, pourquoi des images d’hôpitaux chinois remplis d’enfants avec des perfusions ? « L'infection se traite très bien avec des antibiotiques par voie orale. Mais dans les cas graves, il arrive que les antibiotiques soient administrés par voie intraveineuse », répond la spécialiste. Autre point rassurant, il s’agit d’une bactérie.

Or celles-ci n’ont pas la capacité de muter aussi rapidement que les virus pour devenir plus dangereuses. « Et il ne peut pas y avoir de saut d’une espèce à l’autre. C’est un pathogène qui n’infecte que les humains », complète le Pr Bébéar. Il n’y a donc aucune chance que l’épidémie en Chine soit causée par un mycoplasme d’un nouveau genre.

Sur X (anciennement Twitter), les spéculations vont bon train. Alors que certains agitent déjà le spectre d’une nouvelle pandémie, la plupart des spécialistes sont plutôt confiants. « Je parie qu’il s'agit d'une ’’tripledémie’’ en Chine étant donné que leur politique zéro covid a pris fin l'hiver dernier », a par exemple lancé Caitlin Rivers, épidémiologiste des maladies infectieuses au centre de sécurité sanitaire Johns Hopkins (États-Unis). Ce n’est qu’en décembre 2022 que la Chine a en effet décidé de relâcher doucement ses restrictions sanitaires visant à endiguer le Covid-19.

« Dette immunitaire »

Un avis partagé par François Balloux, directeur de l'Institut de génétique de l'University College de Londres. « La Chine connaît probablement une vague majeure d'infections respiratoires infantiles, car c'est le premier hiver après un long confinement, qui a dû considérablement réduire la circulation des pathogènes respiratoires et donc diminuer l'immunité de la population contre eux », a-t-il déclaré. Ce phénomène de pics d’infections respiratoires post-confinement, bien connu des épidémiologistes, est appelé « dette immunitaire ».

C’est précisément la situation dans laquelle la France était plongée il y a un an. « La saison hivernale 2022-2023 est marquée par la survenue d'une triple épidémie caractérisée par une neuvième vague de Covid-19, une circulation très précoce et rapide de la grippe, ainsi qu'une circulation toujours très élevée de la bronchiolite qui dépasse les niveaux atteints lors des dix années précédentes », avait alors constaté le ministère de la Santé.

Un autre argument plaide contre l’idée qu’un nouveau pathogène aurait émergé. « Si c'était le cas, je m'attendrais à voir beaucoup plus d'infections chez les adultes. Les quelques infections signalées chez les adultes suggèrent une immunité existante suite à une exposition antérieure », a fait valoir le Pr Paul Hunter, spécialiste des maladies émergentes à l’université East Anglia (Norwich, Angleterre), interviewé par le « Science media center ». La prudence reste toutefois de mise et les scientifiques s’accordent à dire que davantage de données sont nécessaires pour juger de la gravité de la situation.

The OpenAI soap opera’s first season is over. And just in time for all involved—even reporters—to take a break for Thanksgiving. Their moods may vary. While many people, including executives, employees and investors in OpenAI, are surely thrilled the boardroom drama got resolved with Sam Altman’s reinstatement as CEO, doubtless a few aren’t so happy. Those would include Altman’s critics at OpenAI as well as the startup’s rivals, who you can imagine have been rubbing their hands with glee in recent days. But hey, all good things come to an end, eventually.

Still, those who enjoyed the drama should remember that a lot remains unresolved. OpenAI’s unconventional corporate structure, which resulted in the company’s board having no investor representation, hasn’t changed, we reported. Also unresolved is the tension between speedily developing OpenAI’s business while trying to adhere to the organization’s mission of doing so safely. That issue was, by many accounts, one that fueled the boardroom drama.

The impact of the boardroom turmoil on OpenAI’s business is uncertain—surely customers were a little rattled by the turn of events, even if they’re happy with the final outcome. Ditto for investors. One test of post-upheaval investor attitudes will come in the $86 billion stock tender, due to close next month, as we outlined here today. For more on what comes next, see here. For a great look back at the work, see our piece in The Weekend here. (Its narrative prompts a question: Just how much Boba Guys product can Sam Altman’s crew imbibe?)

The bottom line is that a second season of this drama is likely to be greenlit. Indeed, as OpenAI is going to investigate the alleged conduct that led to Altman’s ouster, some tumultuous times ahead are guaranteed. For now, though, we all need to find another soap opera to watch. For that, there’s always the marvelous adventures of Elon Musk.

Altman's back, and OpenAI's board has drastically changed. Now comes the hard part.

he OpenAI power struggle that captivated the tech world after co-founder Sam Altman was fired has finally reached its end — at least for the time being. But what to make of it?

It feels almost as though some eulogizing is called for — like OpenAI died and a new, but not necessarily improved, startup stands in its midst. Ex-Y Combinator president Altman is back at the helm, but is his return justified? OpenAI’s new board of directors is getting off to a less diverse start (i.e. it’s entirely white and male), and the company’s founding philanthropic aims are in jeopardy of being co-opted by more capitalist interests.

That’s not to suggest that the old OpenAI was perfect by any stretch.

As of Friday morning, OpenAI had a six-person board — Altman, OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI president Greg Brockman, tech entrepreneur Tasha McCauley, Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo and Helen Toner, director at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technologies. The board was technically tied to a nonprofit that had a majority stake in OpenAI’s for-profit side, with absolute decision-making power over the for-profit OpenAI’s activities, investments and overall direction.

OpenAI’s unusual structure was established by the company’s co-founders, including Altman, with the best of intentions. The nonprofit’s exceptionally brief (500-word) charter outlines that the board make decisions ensuring “that artificial general intelligence benefits all humanity,” leaving it to the board’s members to decide how best to interpret that. Neither “profit” nor “revenue” get a mention in this North Star document; Toner reportedly once told Altman’s executive team that triggering OpenAI’s collapse “would actually be consistent with the [nonprofit’s] mission.”

Maybe the arrangement would have worked in some parallel universe; for years, it appeared to work well enough at OpenAI. But once investors and powerful partners got involved, things became… trickier.

Altman’s firing unites Microsoft, OpenAI’s employees

After the board abruptly canned Altman on Friday without notifying just about anyone, including the bulk of OpenAI’s 770-person workforce, the startup’s backers began voicing their discontent in both private and public.

Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, a major OpenAI collaborator, was allegedly “furious” to learn of Altman’s departure. Vinod Khosla, the founder of Khosla Ventures, another OpenAI backer, said on X (formerly Twitter) that the fund wanted Altman back. Meanwhile, Thrive Capital, the aforementioned Khosla Ventures, Tiger Global Management and Sequoia Capital were said to be contemplating legal action against the board if negotiations over the weekend to reinstate Altman didn’t go their way.

Now, OpenAI employees weren’t unaligned with these investors from outside appearances. On the contrary, close to all of them — including Sutskever, in an apparent change of heart — signed a letter threatening the board with mass resignation if they opted not to reverse course. But one must consider that these OpenAI employees had a lot to lose should OpenAI crumble — job offers from Microsoft and Salesforce aside.

OpenAI had been in discussions, led by Thrive, to possibly sell employee shares in a move that would have boosted the company’s valuation from $29 billion to somewhere between $80 billion and $90 billion. Altman’s sudden exit — and OpenAI’s rotating cast of questionable interim CEOs — gave Thrive cold feet, putting the sale in jeopardy.

Altman won the five-day battle, but at what cost?

But now after several breathless, hair-pulling days, some form of resolution’s been reached. Altman — along with Brockman, who resigned on Friday in protest over the board’s decision — is back, albeit subject to a background investigation into the concerns that precipitated his removal. OpenAI has a new transitionary board, satisfying one of Altman’s demands. And OpenAI will reportedly retain its structure, with investors’ profits capped and the board free to make decisions that aren’t revenue-driven.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff posted on X that “the good guys” won. But that might be premature to say.

Sure, Altman “won,” besting a board that accused him of “not [being] consistently candid” with board members and, according to some reporting, putting growth over mission. In one example of this alleged rogueness, Altman was said to have been critical of Toner over a paper she co-authored that cast OpenAI’s approach to safety in a critical light — to the point where he attempted to push her off the board. In another, Altman “infuriated” Sutskever by rushing the launch of AI-powered features at OpenAI’s first developer conference.

The board didn’t explain themselves even after repeated chances, citing possible legal challenges. And it’s safe to say that they dismissed Altman in an unnecessarily histrionic way. But it can’t be denied that the directors might have had valid reasons for letting Altman go, at least depending on how they interpreted their humanistic directive.

The new board seems likely to interpret that directive differently.

Currently, OpenAI’s board consists of former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor, D’Angelo (the only holdover from the original board) and Larry Summers, the economist and former Harvard president. Taylor is an entrepreneur’s entrepreneur, having co-founded numerous companies, including FriendFeed (acquired by Facebook) and Quip (through whose acquisition he came to Salesforce). Meanwhile, Summers has deep business and government connections — an asset to OpenAI, the thinking around his selection probably went, at a time when regulatory scrutiny of AI is intensifying.

The directors don’t seem like an outright “win” to this reporter, though — not if diverse viewpoints were the intention. While six seats have yet to be filled, the initial four set a rather homogenous tone; such a board would in fact be illegal in Europe, which mandates companies reserve at least 40% of their board seats for women candidates.

Why some AI experts are worried about OpenAI’s new board

I’m not the only one who’s disappointed. A number of AI academics turned to X to air their frustrations earlier today.

Noah Giansiracusa, a math professor at Bentley University and the author of a book on social media recommendation algorithms, takes issue both with the board’s all-male makeup and the nomination of Summers, who he notes has a history of making unflattering remarks about women.

“Whatever one makes of these incidents, the optics are not good, to say the least — particularly for a company that has been leading the way on AI development and reshaping the world we live in,” Giansiracusa said via text. “What I find particularly troubling is that OpenAI’s main aim is developing artificial general intelligence that ‘benefits all of humanity.’ Since half of humanity are women, the recent events don’t give me a ton of confidence about this. Toner most directly representatives the safety side of AI, and this has so often been the position women have been placed in, throughout history but especially in tech: protecting society from great harms while the men get the credit for innovating and ruling the world.”

Christopher Manning, the director of Sanford’s AI Lab, is slightly more charitable than — but in agreement with — Giansiracusa in his assessment:

“The newly formed OpenAI board is presumably still incomplete,” he told TechCrunch. “Nevertheless, the current board membership, lacking anyone with deep knowledge about responsible use of AI in human society and comprising only white males, is not a promising start for such an important and influential AI company.”

Inequity plagues the AI industry, from the annotators who label the data used to train generative AI models to the harmful biases that often emerge in those trained models, including OpenAI’s models. Summers, to be fair, has expressed concern over AI’s possibly harmful ramifications — at least as they relate to livelihoods. But the critics I spoke with find it difficult to believe that a board like OpenAI’s present one will consistently prioritize these challenges, at least not in the way that a more diverse board would.

It raises the question: Why didn’t OpenAI attempt to recruit a well-known AI ethicist like Timnit Gebru or Margaret Mitchell for the initial board? Were they “not available”? Did they decline? Or did OpenAI not make an effort in the first place? Perhaps we’ll never know.

OpenAI has a chance to prove itself wiser and worldlier in selecting the five remaining board seats — or three, should Altman and a Microsoft executive take one each (as has been rumored). If they don’t go a more diverse way, what Daniel Colson, the director of the think tank the AI Policy Institute, said on X may well be true: a few people or a single lab can’t be trusted with ensuring AI is developed responsibly.

The fastest-off-the line production Corvette combines a naturally aspirated V8 with all-electric front-wheel propulsion—and redefines what it feels like to drive a ’Vette, writes Dan Neil.

ON A RECENT TRIP to Los Angeles, I spent a day being awesome in the new, unseemly civilized Corvette E-Ray, Chevrolet’s first hybrid-powered Corvette and the first with winter-worthy all-wheel drive. For Canadians, Christmas came early this year.

The E-Ray has the distinction of being not only the most vigorously accelerating ’Vette in history; it is also, weirdly, the most refined, versatile, usable and commodious. Our test car—in the 3LZ trim package ($123,705, as tested)—was a leather-wrapped luxury launch, buoyed on the adaptive suspension and supple, multi-mode magnetic dampers. Ahoy, sailor.

To be clear, the E-Ray is not a plug-in hybrid. The car typically recuperates enough energy through braking and coasting to stoke its small (1.1 kWh usable capacity) lithium-ion battery pack. If it needs more, it can draw energy from the fossil-fuel reactor behind the seats: a naturally aspirated pushrod V8, producing 495 hp at 6,450 rpm. I’ll give you a moment to stand and salute.

Up front, operating independently but cooperatively, is a large, easily enraged electric motor sluicing power and torque (160 hp/125 lb ft.) between the front wheels, bringing the system’s maximum combined output to 655 hp.

That, plus all the traction on the planet Vulcan, makes it surreally easy for the E-Ray to step off the line. The official 0-60 mph acceleration is 2.5 seconds ahead of a quarter-mile elapsed time of 10.5 seconds at 129 mph. The first number can be credited to the e-motor’s torque, grip and detonator-like response. But that quarter-mile time is all naturally aspirated V8.

Beyond the numbers is the E-Ray’s giddy spontaneity, the way it can effortlessly fast-forward its game play until one politely begs for mercy. The E-Ray answers the typical hammer-drop acceleration test at highway speeds with a prodigious dam burst of eye-widening, jaw-clenching omigod—enough power to “effortlessly complete passing maneuvers,” the press release deadpans. Yeah. The damn thing is a velvet bullwhip.

It will shrink a country road to nothing. In my braver moments I might have ticked up the paddle shifter three times before having to shut it down, calling on the enormous carbon-ceramic brakes (15.7/15.4 inches, f/r), which come as standard equipment. Nice package, by the way.

The E-Ray is fitted with mighty meats: a set of staggered 275/30/ZR20s in front and 345/25/ZR21s in the rear—for the metric-impaired, the rear tire is 13.4 inches wide. But the standard-issue magnetic dampers were not putting up with any nonsense. As I was recalibrating my smile on rough, twisty canyon roads in Ventura County, the chassis seemed to be laying its own asphalt.

Frankly, I wasn’t sure what I was feeling through the flat-bottomed, leather-wrapped steering wheel, except that it was expertly tuned and exquisite: light on center, pointy and precise, with effort and authority building quickly just off center. But the tactile feedback coming from the variable-ratio rack and electric power-steering unit is a highly processed signal, washed with counter-torques that null out vibration, wheel shake and torque steer. The steering feel must also pass through one of the six drive-mode algorithms—ranging from the cushiony Tour mode to the heft-filled Track mode—while looping in signals from chassis dynamics and traction management. The E-Ray puts the fast in Fast Fourier Transform.

It is likewise beyond my ken to know what happened when I stepped on the brakes, except that all my personal belongings suddenly gathered in the footwells to discuss an escape plan. The hybrid’s friction brakes and regen work together to mop up overwashes of velocity like a Swiss bartender. I couldn’t feel the regen’s uptake but I could hear the e-motor whining.

If you were curious as to why a road-focused GT with an already-stratospheric starting price of $104,295 needed the pricey carbon-ceramic brakes, me too. “Reducing weight in the car was critically important,” said executive chief engineer Tadge Juechter. Due to the battery pack stuffed in the center tunnel like salmon roe, the E-Ray is heavy, almost two tons at the curb.

With the eighth-design generation (2019-present), the Corvette went from being a midlife cry for help to a legitimate sports car legend. The first moments sitting in the test car reaffirmed my love for the 8’s swank, future-y cockpit design, with the driver’s workstation separated by a rising diagonal leather console, capped with an elegantly thin line of switches. It was not obvious at the time that this console future-proofed the packaging for batteries.

On the outside, the E-Ray shares the wider, more soul-devouring bodywork of the Corvette Z06. This hard-as-nails track toy generates its own weather with a naturally aspirated, flat-plane crank, 5.5-liter V8, soaring to an emotional 8,500 rpm. Grown men weep. Me, for instance. Anyway, compared to the Sturm und Drang of the Z06, the E-Ray sounds like Tibetan throat singing.

Is it a real Corvette? Clearly, that ontology is undergoing revision back at headquarters. The E-Ray certainly doesn’t sound familiar. At its loudest, the V8’s wail is muzzled and muffled, especially laid against the skyrocketing whine of the e-motor.

Granted, the E-Ray’s hybrid-enabled refinement, next-level performance and all-weather drivability doesn’t remind me of Corvettes past, either.

But it’s OK. I’ll adjust.

Base price: $104,295 (1LZ)

Price, as tested: $123,705 (3LZ)

Powertrain: Mid-mounted, naturally aspirated, direct-injected 6.2-liter overhead valve V8, with dry sump lubrication; automated eight-speed dual-clutch transmission; front-mounted permanent-magnet motor (160 hp/125 lb ft); gas-electric hybrid all-wheel drive

Total system power: 655 hp

Length/wheelbase/width/height: 184.6/107.2/79.7/48.6 inches

Dry weight: 3,774 pounds

0-60 mph: 2.5 seconds

¼-mile: 10.5 seconds at 129 mph

EPA fuel economy: 16/25/19

Cargo capacity: 12.5 cubic feet

Systemic risks are mounting among non-banking financial bodies that lend to struggling house developers

China’s repeated attempts to tackle its worsening property crisis resemble firework displays — full of light and sound, quickly extinguished.

Property stock prices have burst upwards with each new set of government measures to boost the market, only to collapse shortly thereafter. This week’s rally should not differ. 

Shenzhen, one of the most expensive cities in China, offered new edicts to lower downpayment ratios and relax other regulations from Thursday, according to state-run media. Beijing is also expected to provide more financial support for struggling developers in coming weeks. 

Bargain hunters have sought out shares of local developers. Country Garden, China’s largest private developer, rose by a quarter on Thursday, bringing gains for the past month to 50 per cent. Peer Sino-Ocean Group’s share price is up 45 per cent.

Countless policy changes over the past two years have done little to encourage a sustained return of buyers, necessary to stabilise property prices. Home sales at China’s 100 top developers fell by 28 per cent in October as property investment dropped the most in eight years.

Beijing must then encourage more lending, ensuring that developers have access to liquidity. But even that effort may soon hit its limit. Net interest margins at the largest state-owned lenders fell to a record low at the end of the first half. At 1.74 per cent, that has now fallen below the reference level required by the People’s Bank of China for commercial banks.

In particular, the four biggest local banks, Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, China Construction Bank and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China must shoulder the burden of added lending. As a result loan yields are falling. ICBC, the largest state-owned lender, now trades below 0.4 times its tangible book value, a fraction of its regional peers.

For the lending to developers, analysts expect cumulative non-performing loans to go as high as 15 per cent.

The fallout has spread to China’s shadow banking sector — non-bank financial institutions that lend to higher-risk industries. Zhongzhi, one of the biggest, may have a shortfall of $36bn. It has warned that it is “severely insolvent”. Systemic financial risks are mounting. Risk-averse investors should not chase these property companies.

Despite a drop in deal volume, prices remain steady in Prime Central London—and some are taking the leap

Lesley and Johan Denekamp are keenly aware that now isn’t a great time to be selling real estate in central London. Nonetheless, in September, they went ahead and listed their 3,800-square-foot townhouse with Knight Frank, for $5 million.

Why now? The couple are sick of waiting, having already sat out Brexit and the pandemic. “We don’t think we are going to live forever, and four million pounds is a lot of money to have tied up in a house we don’t really need,” said Johan Denekamp.

The couple bought their house in St Katharine Docks, a former dockyard now an upscale marina lined with apartment buildings and houses, in 1997 for an amount they declined to disclose.

Both had jobs in London. Johan Denekamp, 64, was in advertising. Lesley Denekamp, 62, worked for insurers Lloyd’s of London. She could walk to work since the docks are less than a mile from the City, London’s historic financial district.

About 10 years ago the couple, both now retired, built themselves a country home in the county of Wiltshire. Unfortunately, driving through London’s traffic to make the 100-mile trip made their journey unnecessarily long. They decided to relocate to west London and in 2018 moved into a new-build apartment in the Brentford neighborhood.

The couple then listed their townhouse for $6.56 million. But during 2018, the property market was hit by Brexit-related jitters and they failed to find a buyer. They decided to wait, rented the house out and sat out Brexit. Then came the pandemic and they had to sit out that, too. They have now had enough of waiting and are trying again, despite a new challenge to the market: rising interest rates.

Between November 2021 and August 2023, the Bank of England hiked rates from 0.1% to 5.25%, although it did agree to hold rates steady at its most recent meetings in September and November. Data shows that the upper end of London’s housing market appears to be bearing up well against rising mortgage costs.

According to Savills, average sale prices during the third quarter of 2023 in Prime Central London (PCL—defined as the neighborhoods encircling Hyde Park) dropped just 1.2% compared with the third quarter of 2022. They are 0.9% higher than in March 2020.

Across prime London, a wider area incorporating most central neighborhoods plus particularly affluent suburbs, such as St John’s Wood and Hampstead, average sale prices during the third quarter of this year dropped 2.1% compared with the same period last year, said Savills. Prices are 3% higher than in March 2020.

But, just like in major U.S. markets, while prices are holding up reasonably well in central London, the number of deals being done is down.

Stuart Bailey, head of prime sales London at Knight Frank, said transaction levels in October 2023 were 15% down compared with the same month last year.

The reason is that buyers are out to bag a bargain, while many sellers are holding out for a great offer, said buying agent Jo Eccles, managing director of Eccord. “PCL is really resilient, a lot of people don’t have any borrowing, and owners can afford to wait,” she said. Buyers, meanwhile, want a good discount. “London is not a compelling investment at the moment,” said Eccles.

Bailey said the performance of London’s prime market can be split into three categories. The first is homes priced at $3.75 million or less, a needs-based market of mainly domestic buyers. The second is the $12.5 million-plus super-prime market, dominated by globally wealthy and risk-averse investor buyers. These two sectors, Bailey said, are still trading well.

The market between $3.75 million and $12.5 million is flagging. “This is a highly discretionary sector, and it is the bit which is being squeezed,” he said.

Whatever the price bracket, Camilla Dell, managing partner of buying agency Black Brick, said that homes she describes as “best in class” still attract multiple bidders. These, she said, are properties on sought after streets and garden squares, in immaculate condition, with great views and good light. “They are properties which are without compromise,” she said. “They rarely come up for sale and are always competitive.”

Will Pitt, senior director at U.K. Sotheby’s International Realty, has seen the same trend, with American buyers in particular eager to take advantage of the weak pound. “Favorable exchange rates have enhanced London’s appeal for overseas investors,” he said.

Turnkey homes are in particular demand among time-poor buyers, said Pitt. “This marks a change from prepandemic trends, likely driven by soaring construction costs and labor shortages,” he said. “We expect this focus on minimizing renovation costs to intensify moving into 2024.”

Sophia Lucie-Smith, 36, believes the fully refurbished four-bedroom, four-bathroom townhouse in the Chelsea neighborhood that she bought in 2020 (she declined to disclose the purchase price) and shares with her 8-year-old daughter, Petra, meets the best-in-class criteria.

She has decided to sell the property so she can spend some time living in California, where her mother lives. In November, she listed the property for $9.9 million with Sotheby’s International Realty.

“I am conscious about the market but I think this is a really special house,” said Lucie-Smith, a nutritionist. “There is not a huge amount of good stuff on the market.”

The other homes that trade well are those that look like good value for money. “Buyers want a discount,” said Eccles. “To sell a home which is not so special you have to be bold on pricing, and if you are, then you will get interest and buyers may then bid the price back up.”

Sensible pricing is the Denekamps’ strategy. Their home’s asking price breaks down as $1,315 per square foot. Denekamp said he has seen other homes around the docks achieve $1,749 to $1,875 per square foot in recent months.

“I think it is at the cheap end of sensible,” said Denekamp. “We don’t want to sit and wait and talk about the five million pounds we could have got for it five years ago. We don’t have any children to leave it to, and we could wait 10 years for the market to change.”

Halted trial of prospective blockbuster treatment follows latest US legal blow over weedkiller Roundup

Bayer shocked investors this week when it halted a trial of its most promising new drug after discovering it did not work as well as planned.

But for the German group’s recently installed chief executive Bill Anderson, who has more than two decades of experience in the pharmaceuticals industry, such disappointments are just part of the game.

While he told investors that he “deeply regrets” the 18 per cent collapse in the company’s share price after the move, he pointed out that the industry “comes with really high stakes and a high risk profile”. Setbacks like this were “unavoidable” in the quest for medical breakthroughs, he said. “We keep going!”

The abandoned late-stage trial of blood-thinner asundexian highlights the steep challenges facing Anderson, who joined the 160-year-old creator of Aspirin and maker of weedkiller Roundup this year after running Roche’s pharma unit.

Saddled with €39bn in debt and suffering from poor cash generation, Bayer is facing shareholder calls for a break-up. Days before the asundexian revelation, the group was hit by a huge litigation loss in the US, where a Missouri jury ordered the company to pay more than $1.5bn to plaintiffs who blame Roundup, which joined Bayer’s portfolio through the German group’s 2016 acquisition of Monsanto, for their cancer.

The new chief executive arrived with a promise to slash red tape in a push to turn Bayer into a nimble and fast-moving organisation where employees act like entrepreneurs.

Last month he blasted Bayer’s performance as “unacceptable” and stressed that “all options” were on the table, including splitting the pharma unit from the crop science division. However, he also tested investors’ patience with his insistence that he needed until early 2024 to scrutinise options.

Analysts expect a sale of the consumer health unit, which makes over-the-counter drugs and is estimated to be worth about €18bn, is the most likely scenario.

“Anderson really has no time to lose any more,” said Thomas Schweppe, a Frankfurt-based shareholder adviser, adding that management needed to tackle the issues swiftly to prevent making matters worse. “Bayer is running out of options strategically as well as financially.”

Anderson disputes that view, according to people familiar with his thinking who said he was in frequent contact with large shareholders who are telling him to “take your time and get this right”.

The pharma unit, which generates almost half the group’s revenue, is facing the loss of exclusivity over its two best-selling drugs by 2026 as patents for blood-thinner xarelto and eye treatment eylea run out. Their €7.7bn in combined sales last year accounted for 40 per cent of the division’s total.

“The company needs money to invest in pharma, which is subscale and has a pipeline issue,” said Marco Taricco, a partner at Bayer shareholder Bluebell Capital Partners who this week renewed his calls for a “decisive portfolio restructuring”.

After the dashed hopes over asundexian, which Bayer had hoped would eventually generate up to €5bn in annual sales, the company is left with three prospective blockbuster drugs: nubeqa, a new treatment for prostate cancer; kerendia for chronic kidney disease; and elinzanetant for menopause symptoms.

Bayer hopes nubequa and kerendia, which have already been introduced to the market and last year generated €600mn in combined sales, can each eventually generate up to €3bn in annual sales. Elinzanetant could be launched by 2025 and the company believes it may generate peak sales of more than €1bn a year.

Stefan Oelrich, head of pharma, has embarked on an M&A spree over the past few years to offset the patent cliff, forking out billions of euros on companies that specialise in cell and gene therapy. However, it will take years until the acquisitions can replace the group’s ageing blockbuster drugs.

Anderson is also facing new concerns over the Roundup litigation, one of the biggest product liability cases in corporate history.

Tens of thousands of US citizens blame glyphosate, the herbicide’s active ingredient, for their cancer. A $10.9bn settlement in 2020 failed to resolve the problem and the company is still facing new claims. Having lost four court cases since summer, investors are fretting that the $6.4bn Bayer has provisioned may not be enough.

It is standing its ground in the courts, taking on an army of US trial attorneys in a test of cash and nerves.

Its key argument is that there is a scientific consensus that glyphosate does not cause cancer. The European Commission last week renewed glyphosate for use, saying “there is currently no evidence” to classify it as carcinogenic.

Wolfgang Nickl, chief financial officer, told journalists this month the company never expected to win every case and that it would stick to its strategy, while pointing to recent court wins in California and Hawaii. 

“We have no appetite to write humongous checks in a time where we have little free cash flow,” he said, particularly given “our product is safe when used as directed”.

The battle between Bayer and the glyphosate plaintiffs has become a war of attrition. While the claimants try to push the company towards generous settlements, Bayer hopes courtroom losses may discourage future claims as litigation lawyers see potential payouts dwindle.

While the plaintiff in one of the four cases Bayer recently lost was awarded $175mn, the amount granted in another was just €1.25mn. “That’s not going to be a strong incentive to keep going,” Nickl told analysts on a recent call, arguing the sum did not come close to covering trial attorneys’ legal costs.

Trial lawyers spent $1.2mn on US advertisements in September to solicit people allegedly affected by Roundup, according to X Ante, a firm that tracks litigation advert spending. The spending remained the same from August, but the number of ads dropped by 42 per cent.

Markus Manns, a portfolio manager at Germany’s third-largest asset manager Union Investment, which holds a 0.6 per cent stake in Bayer, said the recent string of courtroom losses could suggest the company had not been selective enough in picking the right cases for litigation.

“I think it would make sense to adjust the legal strategy to try to settle those cases which Bayer is at risk of losing in court,” he told the FT, adding that “every lost court case will further damage investor sentiment”.

But while Bayer’s share price has fallen to a level last seen in 2009, some investors have not lost their optimism.

“We still think the business is such an asset-rich company with such great potential,” said McCoy Penninger, a partner at McGinn Penninger Investment Management, whose small stake in Bayer represents 3 per cent of the US firm’s portfolio. Some “bold decisions at the corporate level” could unlock that potential, he said, adding that the current slump could very well be a buying opportunity.