FT : The battle that could lead to Sudan’s next catastrophe Army-held El Obeid h

The battle that could lead to Sudan’s next catastrophe
Army-held El Obeid has come under growing drone assault in offensive by the country’s feared paramilitaries

The Sudanese city of El Obeid has come under intensifying drone attack as paramilitaries battle to prise control of central Sudan from the army, in what international officials warn could mark a grim next chapter of the civil war.

The Rapid Support Forces have targeted water, electricity and fuel supplies in and around El Obeid, a major commercial centre in Sudan’s Kordofan provinces and trading hub for livestock and gum arabic, which is used in products from make-up to Coca-Cola.

The city, which has a population of half a million and an additional 100,000 internally displaced people, lies six hours by road from the capital Khartoum.

The United Nations and western countries have repeatedly warned of the threat of massacres on a par with those in the city of El Fasher in Darfur — which the RSF over-ran last October — should the paramilitaries seek to capture El Obeid.

Sudanese analysts, aid agencies and experts monitoring the war say the bigger danger in the immediate future is of a cholera outbreak, with the disease already spreading in other areas of North Kordofan, of which El Obeid is the capital.

“The situation is horrific. There is a lack of fuel, lack of water, lack of electricity. Water plants are being hit, gas stations are being hit, electricity stations are being hit,” said Kholood Khair, a Sudanese political analyst whose mother is from the city.


Khair said the price of transport, on top of attacks along the roads, has made it much harder for people to flee the city should they choose. “There is one road in and one road out. Both are facing heavy bombardment.”

The region around the city has been the subject of intense fighting since the onset of the civil war in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and their erstwhile allies in the RSF, led by renegade general Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti.

El Obeid was under a prolonged siege that was only broken by the SAF in February last year and is now cut off again from three sides.

According to data from the International NGO Safety Organisation, North Kordofan has had the highest number of drone attacks in 2026 in a war that has increasingly been fought from the air.

The attacks have intensified over the past month, with more than half of 141 strikes recorded to July 8 taking place since June. The vast majority of these were concentrated on El Obeid and the main road leading to the city from the east, which is still controlled by the army.


“Drone attacks are impacting basic services, rising transport and fuel costs, and limiting access to safe drinking water and healthcare,” said Liesbeth Aelbrecht, emergency co-ordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières in Sudan.

She was able to visit the city recently and described desperate scenes at hospitals, with dwindling supplies of medicines and shortages of fuel to run backup power generators.

“There are almost no remaining functional fuel stations and the price of one litre of gasoline has reached nearly $15,” she said.

Researchers have repeatedly accused the United Arab Emirates of supplying weaponry including drones to the RSF, which the US under the Biden administration accused of genocide. The UAE has repeatedly denied evidence of its involvement in the Sudan war.


The capture of El Fasher in Darfur last year marked one of the bloodiest episodes of the civil war in which both sides have repeatedly been accused of atrocities.

Some 6,000 people were slaughtered by the RSF in just three days, according to a UN fact-finding mission, which said the massacres bore the hallmarks of genocide.

“We have seen this modus operandi by the RSF before,” Mona Rishmawi, a member of the UN’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan, said this month when warning of the paramilitaries’ tactics in and around El Obeid.


Experts on Sudan, however, say there are important differences between the two cities.

Residents of El Fasher had already been living in famine conditions by the time the RSF captured it last October. The city was also the last redoubt for Black African Zaghawa and Fur ethnic groups that had been driven from other parts of Darfur during years of ethnic cleansing by the RSF, which grew out of the primarily Arab Janjaweed militia.

El Obeid, though strategically important in the war, did not have that ethnic dimension, said Khair. Aid agencies are still able to reach El Obeid, the army and affiliated militias are well supplied, and there has been no recent evidence of a build-up of RSF forces to suggest an imminent attack, said Nathaniel Raymond, head of the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab.


Raymond has closely monitored the war using satellite imagery, open-source intelligence and witnesses on the ground, and issued clear warnings about what was coming in El Fasher months beforehand.

“Right now drones have exacerbated conditions for a cholera outbreak in El Obeid,” he said. “That could spread like wildfire.”

WSJ : Private-Equity Assets Stuck in ‘Zombie Funds’ Are at a Record High Funds a

Private-Equity Assets Stuck in ‘Zombie Funds’ Are at a Record High
Funds are outliving their intended lifespans as fund managers struggle to sell the remaining assets

  • U.S. private-equity assets stuck in funds at least a decade old hit an all-time high of $348.5 billion at the end of 2025, PitchBook data show.
  • The slowdown in sales has created a liquidity crunch for some pension funds and insurance companies that need to meet payout obligations to retirees.
  • Fund managers who bought assets at peak prices in 2020 and 2021 are struggling to find buyers willing to pay those prices at higher borrowing rates.

A record level of private-equity investments are stuck in funds limping along past their intended lifespans.

Often known as zombie funds, these funds are no longer raising money or making new acquisitions, in part because fund managers haven’t been able to sell their remaining assets. The net asset value of U.S. private-equity assets stuck in funds at least a decade old reached an all-time high of $348.5 billion at the end of 2025, according to PitchBook data. That is 3.5 times the amount in 2015 and more than 100 times that of 2005.

The slowdown in private-equity sales has fueled frustration among investors eager to cash out. Many managers of funds launched in the mid-to-late 2010s struck deals for their existing portfolio companies at the peak of the market in 2020 and 2021, when interest rates were nearly zero. Buyers are now unwilling to pay peak prices at higher borrowing rates, leaving those funds stranded past their typical lifespans.

“In some cases, it’s three guys and a Labrador running the last few assets of the fund,” said Finbarr O’Connor, chief investment officer and founding partner at Treo Asset Management, an outsourced manager for zombie funds.

Some institutional investors haven’t been able to make new investments with their assets tied up in aging funds. The liquidity crunch is especially painful for pension funds and insurance companies that need to meet payout obligations to retirees. The rise of zombie funds could lead to more institutional and high-net-worth investors reducing their private-equity allocations, O’Connor said.

The billions sitting in funds a decade or more older is just the beginning. A wave of maturing assets in the seven-to-nine-year-old bucket behind them is also rising. The net asset value of those funds reached $512.7 billion in 2025, more than two times that of 2015, PitchBook said.


Many funds that snapped up assets during the height of the dealmaking boom are now confronting a more sober environment.

“A huge number of private-equity funds launched in the last 15 years and it would only make sense that there’s now going to be a culling of the herd,” said Dan Rasmussen, founder of asset manager Verdad Advisers.

Overall, the estimated value of portfolio companies that haven’t been sold totaled $3.91 trillion as of September 2025, locking up 74% of all North American private-equity assets on balance sheets, according to Preqin. That unrealized value has steadily risen from $922.8 billion a decade earlier. Meanwhile, dry powder has grown at a slower pace due in part to fundraising hurdles.

Firms have turned to the secondary market and so-called continuation vehicles, which give investors an opportunity to cash out while allowing the sponsor to hold on to the asset. Sponsors say most continuation vehicles aren’t intended for zombie funds, as many buyers in the secondary market aren’t focused on impaired assets.

Some private-equity sponsors say holding assets longer is often intentional to focus on deep value creation.

Mill City Capital, a private-equity firm based in the Minneapolis area, runs a flagship fund that is 11 years old. The fund has two remaining investments, one of which is on the market to be sold, people familiar with the matter said.

The fund’s holdings include a stake in Horizon Hobby, which makes model trains and radio-controlled planes, cars and boats. The firm has remained an active dealmaker by shifting to an independent sponsor model, raising capital for new acquisitions as recently as 2024.

Argand Partners, based in New York, is still running a buyout fund that is almost 10 years old. The firm said it doesn’t consider it a zombie fund and that it invests in its companies and regularly strikes other deals for special purpose vehicles and co-investments, including the Capezio dancewear brand.

A spokeswoman for Argand said the firm typically holds companies for three to four years, but that it was unable to sell the businesses in that fund because the pandemic and subsequent economic shocks froze the mergers and acquisitions market. “We continue to be optimistic that the M&A market will see a recovery over the next 12 months,” she said.

Francisco Alvarez-Demalde, managing partner of private-equity firm Riverwood Capital, said he isn’t seeing fire sales, or funds selling companies at deep discounts. But he said the industry will likely experience a correction.

“There’s going to be a cleansing between different funds, different assets,” said Alvarez-Demalde, who added that Riverwood is well-positioned. “Some assets will lose in that.”

>>> US After Hours Summary: SMCI +18% jumps on guidance, DELL +5.7%, HPE +4.9%,

After Hours Summary: SMCI +18% jumps on guidance, DELL +5.7%, HPE +4.9%, MRVL +2.1%, MU +1.5% higher in sympathy; FNWD +20.2% to be acquired; PEGA -13.4%, AIR -4.9% lower on earnings

After Hours Gainers:

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: SMCI +18% (guides JunQ revs to the low end of guidance, but raises gross margin guidance; backlog rose to record levels), WFRD +3.2%, NLY +1.5%, EQT +1.1% (also signs 5-yr offtake agreement with large Asian energy co), COF +0.1%

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to news: FNWD +20.2% (FFBC to acquire FNWD), OSUR +6.8% (gets FDA EUA for second-generation OraQuick Ebola test), RKLB +6.5% (awarded a $266 mln Air Force contract for suborbital launch), OKLO +5.8% (Oklo and X-energy join Trump administration program to bring new nuclear reactors online faster for AI, according to Bloomberg), CPHI +5.7% (comments on unusual market activity), DELL +5.7% (in sympathy with strong SMCI guidance), HPE +4.9% (in sympathy with strong SMCI guidance), MRVL +2.1% (in sympathy with strong SMCI guidance), MU +1.5% (in sympathy with strong SMCI guidance), ISSC +1% (acquires Aydin Displays), BEP +1% (to combine BEP and BEPC into single public corporation), IMRX +0.7% (publication of new findings in Cancer Research), ALAB +0.7% (in sympathy with strong SMCI guidance), ALB +0.3% (increases dividend), CDE +0.3% (outlines record 2026 exploration spend at Palmarejo, Las Chispas), DIS +0.3% (Pixar Animation Studios takes brunt of company-wide layoffs, according to Variety), NRIX +0.1% (NRIX collaboration with Roche closes after HSR clearance)

After Hours Losers:

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: PEGA -13.4%, NBHC -5.7%, AIR -4.9%, OZK -2%, WAL -1.9%, EWBC -1.8%, ALK -1.7% (also to replace Hawaiian's 717 Neighbor Island fleet with 737-800s starting in 2028; also to add four leased 737-800 freighters, doubling dedicated cargo capacity), RRC -1.3%, CB -0.8%, KREF -0.7% (also to review strategic alternatives), IBKR -0.5%

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to news: DYN -10.1% (launches $300 mln common stock offering), CLDX -7.4% (Phase 2 barzolvolimab study misses key efficacy goals), NNDM -0.7% (names interim CEO; also Phillip Borenstein becomes chairman), HMN -0.3% (two transactions with Medical Mutual of Ohio ), PANW -0.2% (to buy Embrace), BIP -0.1% (to combine BIP and BIPC into single public corporation)

FT : Samsung in talks to invest in Mistral at €20bn valuation

Samsung in talks to invest in Mistral at €20bn valuation
South Korean giant could invest as much as €1bn in French AI group seeking to be a leading alternative to US tech

Samsung is in talks to invest hundreds of millions of euros in the AI start-up Mistral, a move that would bolster the French company’s efforts to become a leading alternative to US technology groups.

The South Korean conglomerate is discussing an investment in Mistral as part of a broader fundraising round that could value the group at roughly €20bn, according to people familiar with the matter.

Samsung, which had previously backed the group through its venture arm, could invest about €1bn in the new round, one of the people said.

The talks reflect a broader push by AI developers to secure partnerships with semiconductor suppliers as the industry grapples with surging demand that far outstrips the supply of computing power.

Mistral is seeking to capitalise on growing interest from European and Asian companies and governments for alternatives to leading US AI models, after the Trump administration blocked foreign access to Anthropic’s latest Mythos and Fable models last month.

The US export controls on Anthropic have sparked a wave of interest in “sovereign AI” capacity. From its inception, Mistral has focused on “open” AI models that can be customised and controlled by customers, meaning no company or government can switch them off.

Samsung has previously invested in Mistral through its venture arm. Overall, Mistral is seeking to raise several billion euros as part of a new round, the people added, which comes less than a year after it was valued at €12bn in a deal led by Dutch chip equipment giant ASML.

Swedish investor EQT’s Scaleup Europe Fund is also in talks to back the fundraising round, these people said. Talks remain ongoing and the terms could yet shift, with no final decisions yet taken, the people cautioned. Sifted previously reported on EQT’s discussions.

The vehicle, which is expected to exceed €5bn, is backed by Brussels and managed by EQT. It has also attracted backing from private investors including Novo Holdings and Santander to fund promising European companies in competitive sectors such as AI.

Mistral, Samsung and EQT declined to comment.

The Paris-based group raised €1.7bn in September, with most of those funds coming from ASML, which is using its AI models to accelerate production of the sophisticated machinery used to make cutting-edge chips. Earlier this year, Mistral raised $830mn in its debut debt financing to support the construction of Nvidia-powered data centres across Europe.

Mistral and Samsung have previously discussed collaboration in the AI memory sector, South Korean media reported in April. Samsung is the world’s largest maker of memory chips and has seen its profits surge over the past year as rising AI demand drives up prices.

The US export controls on Anthropic sparked a wave of interest in “sovereign AI” capacity. From its inception,

But Mistral’s open models face growing competition from China. Moonshot’s latest Kimi model has sparked a new round of fears that low-cost Chinese rivals were narrowing the gap with US frontier AI systems.

Founded three years ago, Mistral has become Europe’s most valuable AI start-up. Chief executive Arthur Mensch told the FT in February that Mistral’s annual recurring revenues were on track to exceed $1bn by the end of this year, following a push to expand its enterprise customers.

Mistral’s talks with Samsung come as the AI industry faces an unprecedented chip crunch, as suppliers of memory and other semiconductors needed to run and train AI systems rush to expand capacity.

Last month, US memory manufacturer Micron invested in Anthropic as part of a wide-ranging partnership that included a long-term memory and storage supply agreement.

This week, Mistral struck an expanded partnership with Microsoft, one of its earliest investors, that sees the US software group making a “multibillion-dollar commitment” to use the French AI start-up’s computing infrastructure.

The Microsoft deal will help Mistral fund its own investment in computing capacity by providing a stable source of revenue that it could borrow against, as it adds thousands of Nvidia’s latest Vera Rubin chips. Mistral’s latest models will also be made available through Microsoft’s Azure cloud-computing service.

FT : European heatwave wiped €2bn from value of grain crop, analysis estimates

European heatwave wiped €2bn from value of grain crop, analysis estimates
France and Hungary worst hit by lost production of maize and wheat

Europe’s June heatwave wiped more than €2bn from the value of its grain crop, according to new analysis, with France and Hungary bearing the brunt of the damage.

Almost 9mn tonnes were removed from forecasts for grain production across the EU and UK in the four weeks following the heatwave, according to Coceral, the European grain traders’ association.

Analysis by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit valued the lost production at about €2.1bn in national farm-gate prices for wheat, barley, maize and other grains, or about 5 per cent using 2025 production value estimates.

The heat struck wheat during the critical period when kernels were filling in central and southern France, southern Germany, Austria, Poland and Hungary, Coceral said. Spring barley was more badly affected than the winter barley crop, which was largely developed before the temperatures rose.

The hottest June on record for western Europe follows a temperature rise of 3C over the 1991-2020 average, In France, the thermometer reached a high of more than 43C and in Hungary the peak was more than 40C.

Benoît Merlo, who grows cereals and raises beef cattle on a 300-hectare organic farm in Ain, eastern France, said he had spent a decade trying to protect his farm from hotter and drier conditions.

“I’ve been working on my farm for 10 years to make it more resilient through cover crops, crop rotations and species adapted to hotter and drier conditions,” he said.

“But with temperatures exceeding 38C for weeks on end, everything is breaking down. I’m expecting yield losses of at least 50 per cent, or even 70 per cent, for certain crops, such as soya. We’re no longer heading for a crash — we’re already there.”

About half of the reduction in Europe’s grain forecast came from maize, used mainly for livestock feed, which was caught during pollination in France and Hungary. Coceral cut its forecast for the EU and UK maize crop from 57.2mn tonnes to 52.7mn tonnes.

The EU is a net importer of the crop in poor harvest years, meaning the shortfall could increase demand for shipments from suppliers including Ukraine and Brazil.

The smaller French harvest could also reduce the amount of wheat available for export to buyers in north and west Africa, while higher feed costs are likely to filter through to livestock producers in coming months.

France accounted for almost half of the grain crop damage. Its forecast was cut by 4.1mn tonnes, worth about €891mn at current prices.

Most of its reduction came from maize, for which the forecast was lowered by 3.35mn tonnes to 9.4mn tonnes — below even the crop produced during the severe drought of 2022.

Hungary suffered the second-largest hit, with its grain forecast cut by 2.4mn tonnes, valued at about €444mn. Spain lost a further 1.4mn tonnes, worth €276mn, while Germany’s forecast was lowered by roughly the same amount, equivalent to €233mn of production.

The impact could be exacerbated for Hungarian farmers because domestic producer prices fell as the harvest approached, with cheaper Black Sea grain weighing on the market. That leaves growers facing the loss of production without the partial offset from higher prices, which could be received by some French farmers.

“This will hit farmers in the pockets, reducing their income and undermining European food security at the same time,” said Tom Lancaster, ECIU land, food and farming analyst.

The ECIU estimate represents the market value of production removed from harvest forecasts rather than the loss of farm profits. Higher prices may compensate some growers whose crops survived, while others may have sold grain forward before prices rose.

Upward revisions to harvests in Bulgaria, Romania, Italy and Finland reduced the net change in the value of expected European production to about €1.79bn. The analysis put the gross value of lost crops at between €2bn and €2.3bn under different price assumptions.

The losses come as EU governments negotiate the future of the bloc’s Common Agricultural Policy.

Théo Paquet, senior policy officer at the European Environmental Bureau, said instead of subsidies being used to fund resilience to climate change, they “continue to fund harmful practices that contribute directly to these crises — fuelling an expensive and unsustainable feedback loop”.

FT : UK ethical fintech boss tried to set up arms deals with Wirecard’s Marsale

UK ethical fintech boss tried to set up arms deals with Wirecard’s Marsalek
Algbra founder sought to help businessman later exposed as a fraudster and spy raise $2.75bn to buy Russian military tech

The head of an ethical fintech backed by Standard Chartered and marketed as “people and planet first” previously sought to set up arms deals with Jan Marsalek, the Wirecard executive who fled to Russia following the German company’s collapse.

Algbra founder Zeiad Idris was in regular contact with Marsalek before he was exposed in 2020 as a fraudster and Russian spy, according to WhatsApp messages seen by the FT.

As he was working to establish the London-based fintech, Idris in 2018 offered to assist Marsalek in raising a $2.75bn fund to acquire Russian military technology and sell it overseas, the correspondence shows.

In another exchange, Idris tells Marsalek an ex-colleague warned him to “stay away from Jan”, before adding: “I was never a good listener . . . Apparently you’re a bad boy.”

The pair’s relationship later took Idris to Marsalek’s Munich mansion and his private collection of military memorabilia, which included one artefact bearing an extraordinary claim: that it was a keepsake from the assassination of Osama bin Laden.

The proposed weapons fund was never launched. Idris says he has had no contact with Marsalek since the Austrian became a fugitive — before his work for Moscow was publicly known.

Algbra says it has had no relationship with Marsalek or Wirecard since it started trading.

An FT investigation has found that Marsalek participated in early-stage discussions about the creation of the business that became Algbra, however.


As Wirecard’s chief operating officer, Marsalek was the architect of the fraud that brought down the once-feted €24bn German payments company.

He also worked for years as a fixer for Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency, facilitating money laundering, blackmail and political interference as well as being involved in alleged kidnap and assassination plots. 

To most who knew him at the time, however, he was simply one of Europe’s most successful businessmen: a gifted and impressive young entrepreneur who was helping revolutionise digital banking.

Wirecard in 2019 started paying New World Capital Advisors, a subsidiary of London-based New World Group, the first instalments of what would become a £490,000 retainer to develop a business plan for a “global Islamic digital bank”, according to contracts seen by the FT.

At NWCA, Idris took personal charge of the project and was the point person for contact with Marsalek.

Idris was also in contact with IMS Capital Partners, Marsalek’s self-described “family office” over a possible anchor investment in the project.

In March 2020, IMS began discussing how a large investment in Algbra could use a complicated offshore trust structure in order to “avoid burdensome KYC [know your customer] questions”.

A further push was made by Idris to get IMS to invest in early June 2020, just weeks before Wirecard collapsed and Marsalek fled.

IMS Capital collapsed after Wirecard’s demise and is now under investigation by German prosecutors over suspected money laundering.

Algbra, a Mastercard-issuing ethical online bank pitched at Muslims in the UK, the Middle East and Asia, is regulated by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority and counts former UK chancellor Philip Hammond among its advisers.

The company was first incorporated in May 2020 by Idris, company records show. It launched itself to consumers the following year. Idris became CEO in June 2021.

The start-up has become one of the success stories of the UK fintech sector, claiming to have processed more than £670mn of digital payments and boasting thousands of business and consumer clients.

As CEO, Idris has made ethics and integrity core to Algbra’s identity.

In the fintech’s 2024 annual report he wrote that its founding principles, which “sit at the intersection of ESG and Shariah compliance”, position it to serve customers “seeking ethical, future-proof financial solutions”.

An Algbra advertisement released last year, featuring a stand-off between two Wild West gunslingers who embrace rather than shoot, declares that the company believes arms are “for hugs”.

Idris has proved a consummate networker. Photographs show him in Silicon Valley lobbying for London with mayor Sadiq Khan and at the Chelsea Flower Show alongside Standard Chartered chief executive Bill Winters.

He told the FT he knew Marsalek from his time working at The Capital Partnership, a London-based investment firm founded by Ahmed Ben Halim, and at Libya Holdings Group, Ben Halim’s Libya-focused investment platform. 

Idris met Marsalek while helping raise funds for LHG investments. During the course of that relationship he also came to understand that Marsalek had deep connections to Russia and was involved with the Wagner mercenary group.

In a lengthy personal testimonial written in 2017 while trying to raise money after leaving LHG, Idris highlighted his relationship with the Austrian. 

“I know Jan Marsalek personally invested €10mn recently into a deal with Libya Holdings to acquire four oil rigs,” he wrote. Marsalek was also interested in acquiring a stake in LHG itself, he added, and had deep pockets. 

LHG and Ben Halim say they did not learn until 2022 that Marsalek had invested in their business. 

As was common in the thousands of messages involving Marsalek that the FT has reviewed over the years, the line between jest and seriousness was often hard to read. Exchanges with Idris about arms sales were peppered with personalised emojis and jocular language.

In October 2018, eager to court Marsalek as an investor for new business ideas he was exploring, Idris travelled to Munich, where Marsalek hosted him at his palatial villa.

There the then Wirecard executive showed Idris a private collection of war trophies and military memorabilia, including an item he presented as one of his most cherished relics: a transparent biological evidence bag, of US military origin, containing Muslim prayer beads and a piece of material.

The beads, Marsalek claimed, were held by bin Laden before his assassination by US Navy Seals, and the cloth was later used to wipe the al-Qaeda founder’s face. 

Idris later recounted the encounter to friends, along with pictures of the purported evidence bag.

The evening continued with Marsalek buying luxury Bavarian Lederhosen for Idris so he would fit in at Oktoberfest, where Marsalek was a regular high-spending corporate host, according to the messages.

On another occasion Marsalek sent Idris a presentation for the $2.75bn fund he was seeking to raise to purchase intellectual property relating to Russian military technology and bring it to market.

Although the tone of their correspondence was light-hearted, the presentation was dozens of pages long and contained close technical detail on weapons systems and their battlefield performance.

The apparent goal was to sell Russian military hardware to Qatar to help it achieve military parity with Saudi Arabia. Marsalek told Idris there would be no problems from Russian authorities.

A diagram with a pile of bullets at its centre said the fund, if established, would be a leading force in exports of advanced Russian weaponry. 

Idris told Marsalek he could market the fund using his London-based business and raise money for it through his own network of investors.

He prepared his own presentation for what he called the “Global Strategic Technology Fund”, which made no direct reference to weapons. It said a “Munich-based team” had “access to key people in Eurasia” and could guarantee access to “technology opportunities”.

The proposal went nowhere, not least because Idris’s business associates at NWCA and NWG were uneasy about Marsalek and wanted nothing to do with him, according to the WhatsApp messages. 

NWG, which removed Idris as a director in January this year but where he remains a major shareholder, declined to comment.

Idris is currently locked in a legal dispute with NWG.

StanChart, which via its investment arm SC Ventures is Algbra’s largest creditor, declined to comment.

Idris told the FT he had had “zero” contact with Marsalek since the Austrian’s disappearance. He added that Algbra had no ongoing link to Marsalek, and that it only began operations after Marsalek’s fall from grace. 

Idris also said he was a younger man when he first met Marsalek and had since changed. 

Idris appears to be among the last people in Europe contacted by Marsalek before his work for Russia became public. 

“Please make Algbra a truly great company in my absence,” Marsalek told Idris in a message on June 22 2020 — by which time he was already in Minsk and on his way to his exile in Moscow. 

FT : Are sunbeds ever safe? Use of tanning beds is surging. Experts are not imp

Are sunbeds ever safe?
Use of tanning beds is surging. Experts are not impressed

No
“The WHO has classified sunbeds as a Group 1 carcinogen — the same category as cigarettes and plutonium,” says consultant dermatologist Dr Ophelia Veraitch. A 2021 analysis of 14,000 people with melanoma – the most serious form of skin cancer — “consistently showed an increased risk associated with sunbed use”. The Department of Health and Social Care’s Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment said in its report last month that using sunbeds before the age of 35 increases risk of melanoma by 75 per cent.

So severe are the risks that, in January, the British Association of Dermatologists said it would support a complete ban on commercial sunbeds in the UK, “citing well-established links between sunbed use and skin cancer, inconsistent enforcement of existing regulations,” says consultant dermatologist Dr Clare Kiely.

In June the BAD shared the Comare report, which mentions some sunbed operators making “false and unsubstantiated claims of health benefits”. These are often reinforced by further misinformation on social media. A government All-Party Parliamentary Group looking into UV safety has recently called for a ban on sunbed advertising.

Brazil, Iran and Australia have already banned sunbeds. “It’s been a very good thing in helping to reduce melanomas,” says aesthetic physician Dr Joseph Hkeik, who has clinics in Sydney and London. “The rest of the world needs to follow suit.” If nothing else, let your vanity hold you back. “As well as increasing cancer, sunbeds accelerate ageing; they damage the DNA of your cells and break down collagen.”

Some sunbed retailers claim to promote collagen by adding infrared light as well as the UV. “This is laughable,” says aesthetic specialist Dr Sophie Shotter. “The UV harms collagen exponentially more than any benefit you’d derive from red light.” 

But what about… 
Yet, despite the panoply of risks associated with UV light, sunbed users claim benefits include improved mood, treatment of inflammatory skin conditions, and increased vitamin D. There is evidence to suggest that exposure to UV light may help reduce skin inflammation, providing relief for conditions such as eczema, psoriasis and acne. It’s therefore possible for sunbeds to suppress symptoms of those conditions – but that’s not to say they offer a solution that is safe. 

“Sunbeds expose the skin to artificial UV radiation, stimulating the skin to produce melanin – a tan,” explains Dr Veraitch. That tan can afford some protection, but only equivalent to SPF 3 (most dermatologists recommend SPF 30 at a minimum). Says Dr Veraitch: “Any tanning from the sun represents UV damage; the skin darkens to protect it from further damage.”


Dermatologist-approved light treatments work by harnessing specific, safe wavelengths of UVB light, which only affects the skin’s outer layer. “Commercial sunbeds deliver predominantly UVA light [the type that more deeply penetrates the skin], in poorly controlled doses, without clinical oversight,” says Dr Kiely. “It’s a wholly different thing.” 

For the same reason, sunbeds are not a useful source of vitamin D. “You need UVB light to make vitamin D,” continues Dr Veraitch. Modern sunbeds, such as the Ergoline Sun Angel, claim to stimulate the production of vitamin D by controlling the interaction between UVA & UVB light – but, again, there are much safer solutions out there. You’re better off following the NHS advice to take vitamin D supplements – around 10 micrograms per day – especially in the winter months.

FT : Lebanon proposes $1mn ‘golden visa’ for low-tax residency Initiative draws

Lebanon proposes $1mn ‘golden visa’ for low-tax residency
Initiative draws scepticism as country struggles with conflict and economic crisis

Lebanese lawmakers are proposing a “golden visa” that would give special tax residency status to foreigners in Lebanon in exchange for investing $1mn in the crisis-ridden country.

Foreign citizens would be required to deposit funds in a bank in Lebanon, or make an equivalent purchase in real estate or another investment, and spend at least 90 days a year in the country.

In return, they would be granted residency and a special tax status that would exempt them from Lebanese taxes on income from shares and moveable assets abroad, according to the draft law.

Under the scheme — which has drawn scepticism from experts — they would also be exempt from Lebanese inheritance tax on assets held in other countries, though income and assets held in Lebanon would still be liable for tax.

Advocates have suggested the move could help to exempt wealthy people from being taxed on their international assets and income by a separate higher-tax jurisdiction — though Karim Daher, a Lebanese tax lawyer, said this would depend on that other jurisdiction’s own tax residency regime.

The scheme would also enable Lebanese passport holders living overseas to pay $500,000 for tax residency in the country.

The law’s advocates say it would help bring much-needed investment to Lebanon. Finance minister Yassine Jaber, who proposed the law, said it was modelled on tax residency programmes in Dubai and Italy, as well as the UK’s now-defunct non-domicile rule.

But the scheme sparked criticism from some lawmakers and tax experts.

“Who would want to come and deposit at least $500,000 in the banks in Lebanon? Who would be crazy enough?” said Ibrahim Mneimneh, an independent parliamentarian. “No one’s going to be depositing money in a bank system that’s not stable and regulated.” 

Daher warned there was a risk that the international system would not recognise the new Lebanese tax residency.

That would leave those who paid for the residency status to pay foreign taxes anyway, said Daher, who chaired a committee that sought to secure Lebanon’s removal from the international Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) so-called grey list of countries with money-laundering deficiencies.

“If Lebanon did not co-ordinate with and obtain the agreement of the countries we have double taxation treaties with, and did not get the agreement of the OECD, the Global Forum [an OECD body] and FATF MENA, Lebanon will truly have conned the people who come to be tax residents,” he said. 

He suggested the law could also be challenged in Lebanon on constitutional grounds.

Many Lebanese seized on the proposal as a source of comedy. Some ridiculed the idea of asking foreigners to pay such steep sums — higher than similar programmes in European countries before they were banned by the EU’s top court last year — for residence in a country that is in the middle of an economic collapse, facing ongoing conflict and Israeli occupation of large areas of its south, and lacking basic infrastructure.

“Come as you are, just bring your own electricity, your own water, and your money!” a video on one viral account joked. Some commentators saw an irony in the idea that people might pay $1mn for Lebanese residency while many Lebanese were seeking to emigrate.

Others noted the scheme would require foreigners to deposit large sums into banks that have not been reformed since they cut depositors off from billions of dollars’ worth of their own money during the 2019 crisis.

Jaber said in response to the mockery that the law “could be something for the future . . . when we solve our problems” and that Lebanon had nothing to lose by passing it.

In a parliamentary debate on Thursday in which the law was returned to committee for further discussion, the proposal was also supported by Hizbollah lawmakers and parliamentary finance and budget committee chief Ibrahim Kanaan.

Critics have argued that it would be illogical and risky to create such a programme before passing reforms to overhaul the country’s banking system and determine how deposits lost in the economic crisis would be repaid.

That legislation is a prerequisite for any deal with the IMF, but Lebanon’s politicians have failed to agree on final versions of the laws, as they are divided over how much of the burden should fall on the state or on the banks.

Mneimneh said people would be wary of depositing money in banks that could later be dissolved during the reform process. 

“What kind of people are we really trying to attract?” Mneimneh asked. “If you want to attract legitimate capitalists, you would have to first have some kind of a system . . . [to] regain trust in the judiciary [and] some accountability.”

FT : US will cut aluminium tariffs to boost defence supply chain Trump administr

US will cut aluminium tariffs to boost defence supply chain
Trump administration offering exemptions to companies that invest in American smelters

The Trump administration plans to cut aluminium tariffs for companies investing in smelting plants as it pushes US defence companies to reduce their reliance on foreign adversaries.

Companies committed to building, expanding or refurbishing American smelting facilities would qualify for incentives amounting to half of the current 50 per cent tariff on raw aluminium “feedstock”, the administration has said.

The White House said aluminium was a “key input for the production of US military systems, including armoured vehicles, naval vessels, spacecraft and missiles, as well as other key strategic products”.

US defence companies are under pressure from the Trump administration to sharply increase production as the Pentagon tries to place America’s defence industrial base on a “war footing”.

But according to a report published last month by the think-tank Safe, formerly known as Securing America’s Future Energy, the number of US smelters used to produce the type of aluminium feedstock that is processed to produce high-performance alloys has fallen from 22 to four over the past two decades.

High-purity aluminium is used to produce everything from fighter jets and missiles to advanced combat armour.

Safe estimated the US will only be able to supply a quarter of its projected aluminium demand by 2029. Iran’s attacks on Middle East aluminium smelters earlier this year, which jeopardised up to 5mn tonnes of production, demonstrated that supply disruptions can quickly translate into “operational risks for the warfighter”, it said.

The White House said: “US demand for primary aluminum currently outpaces the primary aluminum production capacity of US smelting facilities.” It added the tariff exemption “encourages increased reshoring of primary aluminum production”.

Companies will have to apply to the commerce department to secure the tariff relief and must promise to start construction by early 2029.

Jerry McGinn, a former Pentagon acquisition official and director of the centre for the industrial base at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think-tank in Washington, said the tariff relief complemented a recent policy change around “sensitive materials” such as rare earth magnets and critical minerals.

The administration on Monday tightened the conditions under which defence companies qualify for waivers from the defence department that allow them to acquire these materials from “adversaries” including China and Russia in the absence of alternatives.

McGinn noted defence companies were not sourcing materials from adversaries with enthusiasm, but had been forced to do so because “the market is what it is. It took us decades to get into this mess and it is going to take years to get the US and our allies in a better place.”

The US Aerospace Industries Association said it “appreciates the administration’s efforts to reduce US dependence on adversarial nations for critical materials”, but the waiver restrictions would “impede reaching these goals”.

“For several of the minerals identified, domestic sources either do not exist today, or the US lacks the capacity, scale or purity requirements needed to meet demand.”

Donald Trump imposed duties of up to 50 per cent on steel and aluminium imports from most major US trading partners last year using national security laws that allow the president to protect US industry.

But he partially rolled back the metals tariffs on a range of steel and aluminium products earlier this year, with many goods made of the metals being exempt from the duties.

Jesse Gary, chief executive of US-based Century Aluminum, welcomed the latest aluminium tariff exemptions.

Gary said the decision would make it “easier to make investments like Oklahoma Primary Aluminium”, a new smelter in which his company plans to invest alongside Emirates Global Aluminium.