TheChek News Flow

Beijing warns anti-subsidies investigation will have negative impact on relations

Beijing has attacked the EU’s anti-subsidies investigation into China’s electric car industry as a “naked protectionist act” and warned that it will have a negative impact on relations in its first official comments on the probe.

China’s commerce ministry vowed to protect the “legitimate rights” of its companies and reminded the EU of the strong presence and long history of European producers in the world’s second-largest economy.

“It is a naked protectionist act that will seriously disrupt and distort the global automotive industry supply chain, including in the EU, and it will have a negative impact on China-EU economic and trade relations,” the ministry said in a statement.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen announced the investigation on Wednesday, kicking off what might be one of the most serious battles with Beijing in the bloc’s efforts to “de-risk” from China.

Chinese electric vehicles still represent only a small share of the bloc’s market, but they are rising fast and could hit 15 per cent within two years. Their ascent has worried the EU, which had its solar panel market dominated by Chinese producers more than a decade ago.

For China, the EV industry is a bright spot in an economy that is struggling to emerge from the pandemic. Beijing is looking to advanced technology industries and the green transition to help China’s economy reduce its dependence on the property sector.

German carmakers in particular have enjoyed a strong position in China’s car market but have recently come under pressure from an explosion in electric-vehicle sales from domestic producers.

China’s EV makers themselves are suffering from oversupply problems. Exports to the EU were one of the great hopes for the industry after the US limited access by levying heavy tariffs on Chinese car imports while offering subsidies for domestically produced electric vehicles.

“EU automobile companies have invested and operated in China for many years, and the Chinese market has become the largest overseas market for many EU automobile companies,” China’s commerce ministry said.

“China has always upheld an open and co-operative attitude and welcomes EU automobile companies to further expand investment in China, including investment in electric vehicles.”

It added that China’s EV industry had achieved its competitiveness “through hard work”, was favoured by consumers including in the EU and had made important contributions to tackling climate change and the “green transformation including the European Union”.

“China will pay close attention to the EU’s protectionist tendencies and follow-up actions, and firmly safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises,” the ministry said.

Shares in Chinese carmakers fell on Thursday, with Warren Buffett-backed BYD, the world’s biggest seller of battery electric cars and hybrid plug-ins, down 1.4 per cent in Hong Kong.

Hangzhou-based Geely, which owns Volvo and Lotus, slid 0.3 per cent. EV start-up Nio declined 0.8 per cent, while Xpeng rose 0.5 per cent.

Funding includes €650mn in state subsidies as well as investments from Macquarie Asset Management and Renault

French car battery group Verkor has raised more than €2bn in financing for its first plant as European start-ups rush to develop the region’s own industry amid a growing threat from Chinese rivals.

Verkor’s latest fundraising round, which includes €650mn in French government subsidies and fresh money from investors including Macquarie Asset Management, will mainly be used to build a factory in France’s northern port city of Dunkirk.

Chief executive Benoit Lemaignan said in an interview that securing state support had helped it attract private investors, and that the subsidies were encouraging given Europe’s efforts to try to compete with US president Joe Biden’s clean energy initiative, known as the Inflation Reduction Act.

“It’s a sizeable level of public support, which shows we’re not penalised compared to the IRA and support [for companies] in the US,” Lemaignan said. Verkor is among companies that have been wooed by the US in recent months, and have welcomed attempts in Brussels to compete by loosening state aid rules. 

Other investors include platinum producer Sibanye-Stillwater and carmaker Renault, with which it has signed a supply contract, as well as French infrastructure specialist Meridiam. The funding includes a €600mn loan from the European Investment Bank. 

European battery groups say there is still space for localised supply chains, nevertheless, they face an uphill struggle to compete with the advances already made by Asian competitors, including China’s CATL.

Before settling on Dunkirk last year, Verkor had looked at 40 other locations in western Europe, Lemaignan said. Local energy resources, including the availability of low carbon nuclear power, had helped swing the decision, he added.

Similar reasons were also cited by Taiwanese battery maker ProLogium which chose the French city earlier this year for its plant. It is set to receive €1.5bn in French state subsidies. 

Verkor was also counting on a low cost “heat waste” and vapour system developed in Dunkirk and which involved reusing heat produced by industrial processes in the area, Lemaignan added. The heat can be used in the manufacturing of lithium-ion batteries. 

The fundraising took slightly longer than expected, as investors had become more cautious in recent months, in part because of the rapid rise in interest rates, he said.

Verkor’s Dunkirk plant is due to have an annual production capacity of 16 Gigawatt hours, or the capacity to equip 200,000-300,000 electric cars a year, although this could later be expanded. The first deliveries are planned for the second half of 2025.

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Drug resistance is not just a problem with bacteria

Silvia Corcione had a nagging suspicion about a patient who kept on developing fevers, no matter what therapies her infectious-disease team administered.

“We knew he was infected with Candida [a fungus], but we did not know which species,” recalls Corcione, a doctor at Turin’s City of Health and Science hospital. She worried about the infection spreading through the hospital while tests were carried out.

It was eventually established that the species was Candida auris, which is often drug-resistant and has spread across the world since first being identified in Asia in 2009. It was also the first time Corcione encountered it. Antifungal therapy managed to clear the infection, but the patient still died because of other clinical factors.

This episode shows the growing danger of antimicrobial drug resistance, which is now found not just with bacteria but also viruses, fungi and parasites.

Candida auris is usually not a threat to healthy people, and can live on the skin without causing an infection.

But it is dangerous for those in poor health. It mainly spreads in healthcare facilities among people with severe health problems. About one in three of those who contract it pass away. In March, the US Centers for Disease Control issued a warning saying it ­classified the pathogen as an “urgent” threat.

“The rapid rise and geographic spread of cases is concerning and emphasises the need for continued surveillance, expanded lab capacity, quicker diagnostic tests, and adherence to proven infection prevention and control,” said Meghan Lyman, a CDC epidemiologist, at the time.

Candida auris is also on the World Health Organization’s list of priority pathogens. Last year, it said that there were “only four classes of antifungal medicines currently available, and few candidates [are] in the clinical pipeline. Most fungal pathogens lack rapid and sensitive diagnostics and those that exist are not widely available or affordable globally”.

The consequences of poor drug prescribing practices and lack of diagnostics were demonstrated during the Covid-19 pandemic in India. The overprescription of steroids, which weaken the immune system, to treat Covid led to a swell of cases of “black fungus” or mucormycosis. This starts in the nose and quickly spreads to the eyes and brain, and has a high fatality rate. Drugs to treat it were in short supply and the WHO had to step in, calling for supplies to be boosted and prices to be lowered.

Javier Guzman, the director of global health policy at the Center for Global Development, says that medics “who are at the frontline normally don’t see a lot of fungal infections, because there’s no awareness and there’s no testing and you get to [diagnosing] it after many rounds of misdiagnosis”. He warns: “It’s not so much the future [threat] as it is the present. But clearly, this is only going to increase.”

He explains that part of the problem is the rise of highly effective and potent drugs that suppress immune system activity in patients for whom there is a benefit, but which also have the unintended consequence of making them a potential host for fungi that would normally not pose a threat.

Another issue, which he acknowledges is not yet measured, is the rise of climate change. “It’s known that, in warmer more humid climates, you do have more infections, you do have more resistance, you do have more of the right environment for infections to thrive.”

As with most health policy issues, the key is to shift from short-term to long-term thinking, he argues — for example, by focusing on accurate diagnostics and effective treatments that address fungi not seen before. “It’s about looking at fungal infections like a neglected issue,” he suggests. “The armamentarium [treatment range] is not growing, it’s actually shrinking because of the resistance issue.”

Sotheby’s lands $400mn Emily Fisher Landau collection

Intimate Picassos offered by Ward Moretti; Christie’s set to make Paula Rego record; new ‘non-fair’ for London

‘Femme à la montre’ by Pablo Picasso (1932) © Sotheby’s

Sotheby’s has announced it will be offering the $400mn-plus collection of about 120 works that belonged to the Manhattan patron of the arts Emily Fisher Landau, who died in March, aged 102. Two dedicated auctions, on November 8-9, both guaranteed, should give the art market a necessary boost after a weaker season before the summer break.

A longtime trustee of and significant donor to the Whitney Museum of American Art, Fisher Landau stands out as “one of the foremost female collectors of the 20th century”, says Brooke Lampley, global head of Sotheby’s fine art division. “She bought like a museum, as if she had its benefit of hindsight.”

Fisher Landau began collecting art in earnest after a jewellery theft from her New York home in 1969 resulted in a hefty insurance payout. Her collection at Sotheby’s spans major postwar artists — including Pablo Picasso, Mark Rothko and Georgia O’Keeffe — and more recent success stories, such as Glenn Ligon, Nan Goldin and Mark Tansey.

Sotheby’s top estimate by far is reserved for Picasso’s “Femme à la montre”, a bold painting of Marie-Thérèse Walter from the artist’s celebrated year of 1932, priced at more than $120mn. Fisher Landau bought the work in 1968 from Pace.

There are more works in the collection, some of which are being kept by Landau Fisher’s daughter, with others expected to come to market, though Sotheby’s could not confirm.

‘Dora au chignon’ by PIcasso (1937) © Succession/DACS

Picasso is the star of a different sort of sale this season — that of the Dutch couple Pieter and Olga Dreesmann, who are offering 32 of the artist’s works on paper, ceramics and sculptures through Ward Moretti. The exhibition opens in London on October 9, before travelling to the gallery’s new space in Paris and then to New York, where co-founder Emma Ward has rented a gallery on the Upper East Side for the show (November 6-18).

The earliest work in the collection is a drawing of Picasso’s friend and fellow young artist, Carles Casagemas (1899-1900), used as the image alongside the sitter’s obituary after he died by suicide in 1901. A sheet-metal sculpture, “Tête d’homme barbu” (1962), is the latest work in the exhibition, with other highlights including an unusually tender drawing of Dora Maar from 1937, bought from the sitter’s estate in 1998. Such intimate works “could get lost in an auction environment”, Ward says.

The Dreesmanns say they are selling the works to “begin a new chapter in our lives as collectors”, something they have done before, with the £25.3mn sale of their Dutch Old Master paintings in 2012. Their Picasso collection is valued at more than $40mn, Ward says, with individual prices ranging from $12,500 to $3.5mn.

‘Dancing Ostriches from Walt Disney’s “Fantasia”’ by Paula Rego (1995)

Christie’s has landed Paula Rego’s majestic two-part pastel “Dancing Ostriches from Walt Disney’s ‘Fantasia’” (1995), which it will offer in London next month with an estimate of £2.2mn-£3.2mn — it would mark a record public price for the Anglo-Portuguese artist. The work was originally commissioned by London’s Hayward Gallery for its 1996 Spellbound: Art and Film exhibition.

Rego used her favourite model, Lila Nunes, for the ballet dancers, who come across as “deeply human and rooted, with a real physical presence”, says Tessa Lord, Christie’s interim head of postwar and contemporary art. Rego is a relative rarity at auction, partly accounting for what Lord describes as her being “slightly undervalued” on the public market. Her record stands at £1.1mn, made in 2015 for “The Cadet and his Sister” (1988).

The first international outpost of Stuart Shave’s Modern Art gallery in a Haussmann-designed building on Place de l’Alma, Paris

Stuart Shave will open the first international outpost of his Modern Art gallery in Paris, joining the incoming Hauser & Wirth and Mendes Wood in the French capital next month. Modern Art’s 2,000 sq ft, second-floor space will be in a Haussmann-designed building on Place de l’Alma in the city’s central eighth arrondissement.

Shave says that the move has been in the planning for a few years — “most of my artists don’t have representation in Paris” — but that it wasn’t a Brexit-motivated decision. The aim is for the Paris gallery to “complement” what he is doing in London, given the proximity of the two cities, he says. The UK capital, where he has two galleries, is “still the best city in the world for contemporary art”.

Each location will function very differently, Shave adds — the Paris gallery will host about three shows per year, versus more than a dozen in London, and will be by appointment only. He opens on October 16 with a group show including Eva Rothschild, Mohammed Sami and Sanya Kantarovsky. Modern Art is not joining this year’s coinciding Paris+ par Art Basel fair as, Shave says, “I am really mindful about what we take on.”

‘Collision’ by Savannah Marie Harris (2023)

The London gallerist Jonny Tanna, founder of Harlesden High Street, is behind what he is calling a “new non-fair”. Minor Attractions groups 20 galleries across two locations in Soho and London Bridge during Frieze week (October 10-15). Tanna says that the non-fair aspects include free entry and a more informal, socially focused event. “We’ll put up the works and have a party,” he says. Tanna compares the vibe to the recently founded, and well-received, Basel Social Club.

Tanna’s inspiration came from his own experience of the art world, which he joined after battling what he describes as “a gambling problem for 10 years”. Volunteering in galleries afterwards, he initially found “a lot of snootiness in a world that was hard to navigate” and set out “to do the opposite and erase elitism”.

Tanna is, however, delighted that Harlesden High Street has been accepted into the hallowed halls of this year’s Frieze London. Here, he will present a project that replicates the set of the US programme The Junior Christian Science Bible Lesson Show, a long-running community TV show that used puppets and songs to spread the word to children. It will have works by recent graduates Hamed Maiye and Mattia Guarnera-MacCarthy (under £10,000), as well as the artist — and the show’s puppeteer — David Liebe Hart. Tanna will also show in the London Bridge venue of Minor Attractions (called Cornershop), with the painter Savannah Marie Harris (£6,000-£12,000).