TheChek News Flow

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Macro :

- Taiwan Envoy Sees ‘Alarming’ Signs in China’s Economic Slowdown

- REIT M&A on Ice Due to Falling Property Values, Leverage Stress

- Italy Could Amend Windfall Tax on Bank Profits, Corriere Says

- The Big Bet on Luxury Stocks Stumbles on Inflation, China Woes

- PIF-Backed Driller, Holders Seek up to $1.2 Billion in Saudi IPO

- Bitcoin ETFs With a $100 Billion Promise Put Old Funds in Danger

- Ueda’s Policy Musings Send Yields and Yen Climbing: Macro Squawk

Keep an eye on :

- ADJ GY : Adler Group Sells Berlin-Based Rental Portfolio for €130M

- AGS BB : Ageas Gains as BofA Lifts to Buy on Already Priced-In Challenges

- AIR FP : Vietnam Air, Boeing Near $10 Billion Deal for 50 737 Max Planes

- ARM LN : Arm Is Said to Consider Raising IPO Price Range

- AZN LN : AstraZeneca Lung Cancer Drug Works Better With Chemotherapy

- BARC LN : Barclays to Cut Hundreds of Jobs Across Trading, Investment Bank

- BMPS IM : Italy Could Amend Windfall Tax on Bank Profits, Corriere Says

- BB FP : BIC Sees 5%-7% Annual Net Sales Growth In Updated Horizon Plan

- ALBPS FP : Biophytis Gets FDA Authorization to Start SARA-31 Phase 3 Study

- BNP FP : BNP, UniCredit, ING M&A, Buyback Goals Curbed by Earnings, Taxes

- 1COV GY : Covestro Agrees to Start Talks With Adnoc on Possible Takeover

- DAI GY : Daimler, Paccar, Cummins JV Set to Cut Truck Battery Costs: BNEF

- ECV GY : Encavis in Deal With Greengo Energy for 500 MW Solar Pipeline

- EXO NA : *AGNELLIS' EXOR DENIES GIORNALE REPORT ON PLAN TO SELL JUVENTUS

- GAM SW : Finma Reviews NewGAMe’s Appeal Against Takeover Board’s Ruling

- GIMB BB : Flemish Govt to Start Selling €328M Stake in Gimv: Tijd

- ISP IM : Italy Could Amend Windfall Tax on Bank Profits, Corriere Says

- JUVE IM : *AGNELLIS' EXOR DENIES GIORNALE REPORT ON PLAN TO SELL JUVENTUS

- KSP ID : Kingspan Said to Make Rebuffed Proposal For Tie-Up With Carlisle

- LHA GY : Italy’s Meloni Urges Europe to Clear Lufthansa-ITA Airways Deal

- MC FP : Bernard Arnault Has Spent €215 Million Buying Dip in LVMH Stock

- MC FP : Birkenstock May Announce IPO Plan Next Week: Handelsblatt

- MC FP : Chinese Billionaire Said to Invest in Frette Buyout (Correct)

- NOVOB DC : Novo Nordisk to Cap Insulin Price at $35/Mo. for Uninsured NYers

- SAN FP : Sanofi Treatment Granted Orphan Drug Status by FDA

- SESF FP : Intelsat Invests in Lower Orbits as Musk’s SpaceX Upends Sector

- SESL FP : Vistry Group, SES-Imagotag: Earnings Day Ahead

- GLE FP : SocGen, Brookfield Partner to Launch €10B Private Debt Fund

- STLA IM : Stellantis Says Second Tranche of Share Buyback Is Complete

- TSLA US : Tesla to Surge Thanks to Dojo Supercomputer, Morgan Stanley Says

- UBSG SW : Merrill Lynch Loses Advisors With More Than $3.4 Billion to UBS -- Barrons.com

- URW FP : REIT M&A on Ice Due to Falling Property Values, Leverage Stress

Hawks face tough battle to convince other rate-setters to raise eurozone borrowing costs one more time

The European Central Bank’s hawks have their last big chance for many months to raise interest rates this week, according to analysts who are divided on whether they will be able to seize it.

There are potential pitfalls for the ECB in whichever decision it makes: keeping rates on hold invites criticism that it is giving up too early in the fight against inflation, but raising them risks making a looming economic downturn worse.

Ahead of Thursday’s knife-edge decision, Dutch central bank boss Klaas Knot said investors may be underestimating the possibility of a rate rise, not least because persistently high wage growth remains “pretty far off” the level consistent with inflation falling to the ECB’s 2 per cent target.

Others, such as Germany’s central bank head Joachim Nagel and Belgian governor Pierre Wunsch, have echoed those concerns.

“If they don’t hike in September, the window will close,” said Frederik Ducrozet, head of macroeconomic research at Pictet Wealth Management. “GDP growth is on the verge of contracting, and credit growth is slowing fast.”

Whatever happens, this week’s decision is seen as the hardest to call since before the ECB started to raise borrowing costs in July 2022, made more tricky by the lack of any signals from the central bank on its next move for the first time in over a year.

The ECB, led by president Christine Lagarde, has raised borrowing costs at nine consecutive policy meetings, lifting its benchmark deposit rate from an all-time low of minus 0.5 per cent to a record high of 3.75 per cent in a push to tame the biggest inflation surge for a generation.

More “dovish” members such as Portugal’s central bank boss Mário Centeno say the risk of “doing too much” has become “material” as the outlook for the eurozone economy has deteriorated in recent weeks. 

Ignazio Visco, governor of Italy’s central bank, said: “I believe we are near the level where we can stop raising rates,” citing measures of underlying inflationary pressure that show it is declining.

Investors are betting on a pause, with derivatives markets pricing just a 35 per cent chance of the ECB raising its deposit rate to 4 per cent on September 14. The chance of higher rates fell last week after data revealed sliding business activity, falling German industrial production and a downward revision to second-quarter eurozone growth from 0.3 per cent to 0.1 per cent. 

Inflation in the eurozone has halved since last year to 5.3 per cent in August. But it is still running well above the ECB target, while upward pressure is coming from rising oil prices and a weakening euro that pushes up import costs, meaning another rate rise is still on the cards.

“I anticipate that they [the hawks] will prevail next week and hike,” said Vítor Constâncio, former vice-president of the ECB, predicting inflation will remain high even as the eurozone stagnates. “Stagflation is coming to the euro area, which should imply that for quite some time there will not be other hikes.”

The ECB will also publish new quarterly forecasts on Thursday, which are likely to show lower estimates for growth this year as well as slightly higher inflation expectations for both 2023 and 2024.

Last year, the ECB was criticised for being too slow to start raising rates after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine sent energy and food prices soaring. The US Federal Reserve reacted quicker and inflation is now lower in the US than in the eurozone. 

“It looks bad if they pause when inflation is still at 5.3 per cent,” said Ludovic Subran, chief economist at German insurer Allianz. “Is the ECB throwing in the towel too early? It is spooky for people who worry about this narrative of stagflation in Europe.”

Another reason for the ECB to keep raising rates is a concern that rapid wage growth will keep price pressures stubbornly high, particularly for services companies, for which labour makes up the majority of their costs.

Figures published by the ECB last week showed pay per employee in the eurozone rose at an annual rate of 5.5 per cent in the second quarter, while unit labour costs were up 6.4 per cent — both near all-time highs. 

“The hawks will be able to rely on the numbers to support their position,” said Claus Vistesen, chief eurozone economist at researchers Pantheon Macroeconomics, adding that falling productivity risked fuelling inflation.

However, the economic outlook is increasingly grim, bank lending has slowed sharply, the eurozone’s labour market is starting to weaken. That all supports the doves’ cause.

Core inflation — which excludes energy and food and is seen as a better indicator of underlying price pressures — looks to have peaked this summer. It is expected to fall further as economic activity slows and once discounted German public transport tickets from last summer fall out of the year-on-year comparison this month. 

“What is the point of tightening monetary policy?” said Dirk Schumacher, a former ECB staffer now working as an economist at French bank Natixis. “It is to slow the economy. Well that is happening now.”

Some predict that, as the ECB nears the peak on rates, it could look to tighten policy using other tools, such as shrinking its balance sheet quicker through so-called quantitative tightening (QT) by bringing forward the end of reinvestments in the €1.7tn bond portfolio it started buying in the pandemic.

“We expect the ECB to accelerate the process of QT,” said Camille de Courcel, head of European rates strategy at French bank BNP Paribas.

Another option could be to cut the amount of interest paid to commercial banks or governments on their deposits at the ECB.

Whether the ECB raises rates or not, the biggest challenge for Lagarde could be trying to convince markets that borrowing costs could still rise should inflation end up remaining too high.

Krishna Guha, a former Fed official now vice-chair at US investment bank Evercore-ISI, said: “The ECB is probably done in September either way.”

The supermarkets’ next big product is your data

Personalised online and in-store advertising could prove very profitable for retail chains

One of the ironies of the pricing storm around UK supermarkets this year is that if the grocers were “greedflating” the nation’s food they were doing it remarkably badly. 

The competition watchdog in July concluded that weak competition wasn’t the cause of soaring food prices: operating profits in retail grocery had fallen by 42 per cent in the 2022-23 financial year. 

The supermarkets are generally looking for profitable ventures, like selling fuel, to stay competitive on food. The latest involves your eyeballs — and your data. 

The idea of “retail media” is an old one. Supermarkets always used promotions, banners or tannoy announcements to boost sales of certain products — often funded by the manufacturer in question. There has long been talk about the opportunity presented by the growth in ecommerce, combined with supermarkets’ customer data particularly from loyalty programmes. The idea is to sell ads, either in-store or online, to consumer goods companies desperate for targeted marketing and measurable returns.

In one sense, this is the Amazonisation of retail: the US tech company’s flogging of sponsored products accounted for two-thirds of US retail media in 2021, according to Boston Consulting Group. 

As others now get in on the act, this type of advertising is forecast by media buyer GroupM to buck a slowing digital market, surpassing television ad revenues by 2028. The phasing out of cross-website cookies that track users’ browsing make the walled garden of retailers’ sites and loyalty programmes more valuable.

Consumer groups are moving their money. Nestlé has highlighted a forecast that a fifth of industry media spend would be through e-retail by 2025, note analysts at Exane, while Unilever’s retail media spending has tripled in the past three years and could reach a quarter of its total budget. 

One retailer told me it has doubled its online ad inventory over the past year, while in-store space has increased tenfold. In-store screens can quickly be changed according to the time of day or the weather; personalisation online can effectively boost advertising space further. 

Compared to the grunt work of shifting food, this is lucrative stuff. BCG puts gross margins for retail media at about 80 per cent, compared with grocery retail at 20 per cent; the disparity is probably even greater at the operating level where big supermarket margins are 3-4 per cent.

Tesco and Sainsbury, with well-established loyalty schemes and data analytics operations, are coy on how big this is or could be. Sainsbury’s has said that the Nectar360 loyalty and marketing business could add an additional £90mn in profit (on an unspecified base) over five years to March 2026. Tesco’s boss Ken Murphy commented that retail media could be a “meaningful contributor to profit” within three years, which Clive Black at Shore Capital interprets as perhaps £200-300m in the 2027 financial year, or 8-12 per cent of last year’s operating profits.

It would be easy to start pencilling in bigger sums. In the more developed US market, Walmart has mentioned an aspiration of roughly 6 per cent of sales, compared to less than 1 per cent last year. Kroger’s media income sits within “alternate profit streams”, which includes other businesses like financial services. It accounted for a quarter of operating profit last year. 

But there are reasons for caution. Supermarkets need to tread carefully in using customer data, even when they have permission via loyalty schemes, as retail media expands its horizons. Supermarkets already offer “off site” advertising on the wider web to brands. The next frontier, something Ocado is exploring, is so-called non-endemic advertising, where supermarkets’ rich data sets are used to advertise products not sold by the grocers, such as cars, holidays or credit cards.

One question for investors is how much media profit is simply reinvested into competing on food. Another is how this affects supermarkets’ crucial (and sometimes fraught) relationships with suppliers. The line between traditional trade budgets, for product promotions, and newfangled retail media campaigns is currently murky. 

But the biggest test may be whether retailers can resist the temptation of high-margin advertising sales in the name of preventing food customers’ from feeling overwhelmed by marketing, either in-store or online. The success of retail media will rest on whether grocers can use customer data to sell advertising without making shoppers feel like a piece of meat. 

Funds hope an easing of US sanctions will trigger big gains for bonds trading at fraction of face value

Venezuelan government bond prices have climbed in recent weeks as investors speculate that the revolutionary socialist government of President Nicolás Maduro is nearing a diplomatic breakthrough that could lead to a softening of US sanctions.

The oil-rich country’s debt trades at a tiny fraction of its face value following Venezuela’s default on $60bn of debt in 2017 and subsequent curbs placed on secondary trading that have frozen US investors out of the market. Prices plummeted further in 2019 when JPMorgan ejected the bonds from its widely-followed emerging markets index.

Now, bondholders say leaks from Washington pointing to progress in the secretive, long-running talks with Caracas have helped ignite a rally in the bonds, which are trading at 10 to 11 cents on the dollar, up from 8 to 9 cents a few weeks ago.

“The US government would like to reach a deal with Maduro because this would solve two issues related to President Biden’s re-election: The migration of Venezuelans to the US and Russian-Saudi attempts to squeeze the oil market,” one bondholder said.

The Biden administration inherited a strategy of “maximum pressure” economic sanctions against Venezuela from President Trump, which critics say failed to dislodge Maduro from power, helped trigger the exodus of more than 7mn refugees from Venezuela and pushed Maduro closer to longtime allies Iran, Russia and China.

Biden’s Latin America team has pursued a different approach, offering an easing of sanctions in return for guarantees from the Maduro government of a free and fair presidential election in Venezuela next year. Maduro’s last election victory in 2018 was boycotted by the opposition and criticised by the west as rigged.

Juan González, Biden’s top Latin American adviser, led a delegation to Caracas in March 2022 to open high-level talks with Maduro but progress since then has been slow.

Hans Humes, CEO of emerging market investment firm Greylock Capital, said speculation about progress in the US-Venezuela negotiations had buoyed prices in recent weeks. “We know [talks] could fall apart at any time but the interests [of the two governments] have been aligned for a long time,” he said.

Asked about US-Venezuela talks at a press briefing last Wednesday, President Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the US was “prepared to engage in discussions about specific sanctions relief in return for concrete steps that lead us towards a free and fair election” but that he would not “characterise any current diplomatic discussions in that regard”. The National Security Council declined to comment further.

Although debt issued by Venezuela and its state oil company PDVSA is not currently paying regular interest, some buyers are keen to snap it up as a claim in an eventual restructuring of the country’s bonds.

Although such a prospect remains distant, even a relaxation of the US trading ban would likely result in large price increases, they argue, given it would open up the bonds to demand from a much wider group of investors.

Nick Lawson, chief executive at London-based brokerage Ocean Wall and a Venezuelan bondholder since the end of 2021, said he believed debt issued by the South American nation could go much higher. “Cuba trades at 6 cents [in the dollar],” he said, “Lebanon which has no natural resources is at 11 cents. We think on a three to four year view we could get 75 cents back. The asymmetry between risk and reward is compelling.” 

One source close to the talks insisted that positive news could come in the next week or two. “There is the potential for a deal on a broader basis,” he said, explaining that this would consist of a series of steps taken by the US and Venezuela towards normalising relations, rather than a single announcement.

The US closed its embassy in Caracas in 2019 and American diplomats working on Venezuela have operated from neighbouring Colombia since then. The sanctions imposed by Trump included a ban on Venezuelan oil, on business with PDVSA and on US citizens or entities trading Venezuelan debt.

Investors have complained that the effect of the bond trading sanctions has been to force US funds to sell their Venezuelan holdings to buyers whose operations are less transparent, for instance those located in the Middle East or Turkey.

“These bonds end up in unfriendly jurisdictions,” said Claudio Zampa, founder and chief investment officer of Mangart Capital, a Swiss-based hedge fund invested in Venezuelan debt. “The US is giving away its leverage and its ability to be a player in the restructuring of Venezuelan debt.”

Republicans in the US congress have opposed relaxing sanctions on Maduro, but the mood has been shifting since Russia invaded Ukraine and western sanctions on Moscow forced Washington to search for alternative sources of oil to supply world markets.

Edward Cowen of Winterbrook, who has co-invested in a fund to buy Venezuelan debt, was optimistic that Venezuela was “very close to an inflection point”. He said: “European interest has certainly increased in the last months as the thaw between Venezuela and the US starts to take hold.”

However, those who have followed the US-Venezuela talks closely say there is no guarantee of an agreement. A similar bond rally earlier in the year fizzled out, with the debt falling back into single-digit cents on the dollar.

The Maduro government has shown no public sign of relaxing its hardline stance, which has included banning María Corina Machado, the opposition presidential candidate currently leading polls.

With presidential elections expected next year and the opposition planning a nationwide primary on October 22 to choose its candidate, time for a deal is ebbing fast. “If the primaries come and go and there’s no deal, then there isn’t going to be a deal,” said another person close to the talks.

How Byredo’s Ben Gorham joined forces with skincare guru Susanne Kaufmann

The duo’s passion for nature is at the heart of their new Alpine-inspired oils

“It all started with a conversation, as it always does,” says Ben Gorham, perfumer and founder of cult fragrance brand Byredo. He met the natural skincare pioneer Susanne Kaufmann for the first time in person last year in Paris and by the time they were sitting down for dinner they were already discussing a possible partnership. “We got along so well — it felt like more of a collaboration between two friends than two brands,” Kaufmann says.

They came up with the idea for two products: a body and a fragrance oil, which melded their expertise — and their approach. “We come from very different, albeit similar worlds, and see skincare and fragrance as ritualistic practices,” adds Gorham of the project, which took about a year and a half from start to finish. “We have a similar ethos and taste so that was the easy part — the creative side,” Kaufmann recalls. “There were no egos involved.”

“I’ve always admired what Ben does — coming from sports, building up a perfume brand, and I love his scents,” she says of her decision to work with the 6ft 5in Swede, who was born to an Indian mother and Canadian father, and grew up between Toronto, New York and Stockholm.

Gorham pursued a professional career in basketball in the Swedish capital before visa complications derailed his ambitions. After working on construction sites and earning a degree in fine arts, a chance encounter with perfumer Pierre Wulff in 2004 set him on a new path.

Two years later, Byredo was born. The global brand’s offering of boutique fragrances has now expanded to make-up, body care and leather goods. Spanish luxury group Puig acquired a majority stake in Byredo in a €1bn sale in May 2022.

Gorham is a serial collaborator — Byredo has partnered with brands as diverse as Off-White and Ikea — but this collection was a chance to explore a shared passion: nature. “We love getting in touch with the earth, our roots and the communities we surround ourselves with,” says Gorham. Their new, limited-edition collection is named after a region in the west of Austria, Bregenzerwald, where Kaufmann was born and raised.

This is Kaufmann’s first collaborative venture — but she has been harnessing the centuries-old knowledge of Alpine plants to create efficacious, science-backed formulas for the past 20 years. Her conscious skincare range began when she took over the family hotel in the 1990s and created her own product line to support the treatments for the spa. She still resides in Bezau, a picturesque village lying in a valley nudging against peaks perennially carpeted in pines. “The clocks turn backwards here,” she laughs.

The fragrance of the oil is based on the Bregenz forest near to where Kaufmann lives. “The woods served as our inspiration and we spoke about how to translate these amazing landscapes into a product,” says Gorham, who describes the scent as both “fresh and invigorating, while also being sensual, natural and sophisticated”. Kaufmann outlines the three different notes: “The head is more flowery, the heart is pine, and the woody base is the moss.” With notes of jasmine and hints of fig, this is a sweet, earthy unisex fragrance that “is not more feminine or masculine, it’s just the scent of the forest”, says Kaufmann.

Intuitively connecting scent and emotion has long been Gorham’s modus operandi. He associates the bittersweet memory of his absentee father with the smell of green peas, which formed the basis for his first fragrance, called Green. “When I began Byredo, I would create products from a completely subjective place and tap into this idea of a collective memory or emotion,” he explains. “Eventually you realise that your position as a creator is more about proposing and inspiring, or igniting an emotional memory for others.”

Gorham had his own particular experience with oils growing up. “My mother is from India and would always use a mixture of different ones for both her skin and hair,” he says. “Oils are synonymous with wellbeing, massage and traditions. It’s one of the true arts of life.” The antioxidant-rich oils found in the Bregenzerwald collection include apricot kernel, meadowfoam seed and sunflower seed, which are sourced as locally as possible from Europe.

It was Kaufmann’s continued commitment to sustainability that was part of the draw for Gorham. “I love that she’s always stayed true to her values as her success has grown,” he says of Kaufmann’s oils, which are bottled in recyclable glass. The cardboard boxes are printed in deep green and bright blue to reflect the vivid colours of Bregenzerwald. “When you come to Bezau you will see why — it’s like the forest is kissing the sky,” Kaufmann smiles.

Schadenfreude, Burning Man and the unifying power of mockery

The reason we feel so good about laughing at people’s expense is that we have convinced ourselves they deserve it

The news that some 70,000 Burning Man attendees had been trapped in the Nevada desert last week, amid a deluge of mud, human excrement and rampant privilege, managed to produce a rare thing in our divided times: agreement across the political spectrum. These people were clearly insufferable, and it was OK — right and proper, even — to laugh at them.

The “Burners” didn’t exactly make this difficult. As torrential rains transformed their “crucible of creativity” into a hellscape, bringing this year’s “Animalia” theme — focused on correcting the false notion that “mankind is not part of the animal kingdom” — rather magnificently to life, attendees took to social media to complain of their terrible suffering.

Neal Katyal, a former US solicitor general who now charges $2,465 an hour to defend corporate behemoths at Hogan Lovells, drew particular mockery. “It was an incredibly harrowing 6 mile hike at midnight through heavy and slippery mud,” wrote Katyal on X, formerly known as Twitter. This came along with a picture of himself in full aren’t-I-quirky-and-unique festival garb: a ridiculous cap with a propeller on the top, a garish shirt covered in what appeared to be goblins, and a faux-gold chain with some kind of huge and hideous pendant hanging off it. (Totally radical, bro.)

“Why am I not surprised that Neal Katyal made it a priority to get to a neopagan ritual?” asked Jeffrey Clark, one of Donald Trump’s alleged co-conspirators in attempting to overturn the results of the 2020 election, on the same platform. “Pray that these folks come to the light & realize that the only path is through and to our Lord.”

For America’s conservative Christians, the Burning Man mudpocalypse was proof that God is not actually OK with drugs, depravity and so-called “orgy domes” — the biblical rainfall was evidently his way of punishing the infidels. “God has a way of making sure everyone knows who God is,” Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Maga-tastic congresswoman told InfoWars. “God’s judgment is real,” tweeted Republican senator Mike Lee.

Elsewhere the sheer delight at the misfortune of the Silicon Valley tech bro pack and the wealthy elites who accompanied them was of a less God-sanctioned variety, but still expressed in entirely morally justified terms. “Yes, it’s OK to laugh at wealthy Burning Man attendees mired in muck,” read a headline in the Guardian. Why? Because the festival is “a magnet for the kinds of people who make a lot of money by devoting their lives to upholding the unjust status quo, and who go to Burning Man in part to shore up their smug sense of being creative innovators as they endeavour to make things worse for the rest of us”.

Conservative commentator Douglas Murray revelled in “the delicious schadenfreude” of it all. And schadenfreude — literally “harm-joy” — is certainly the word most widely used to describe what is going on in all these reactions. But Colin Wayne Leach, professor of psychology at Barnard College, thinks we are getting our German wrong. He says what we are feeling is closer to Genugtuung, a word which he explains is used mainly in a legal context to mean “a sense of satisfaction that the proper punishment has been meted out for wrongdoing”. Genugtuung is different from schadenfreude because rather than simply taking joy at the pain of others, we are taking comfort that they are getting their comeuppance.

“Schadenfreude is a passive little pleasure taken in observing fairly minor misfortunes by people who have done little or nothing to deserve it,” Leach tells me. “I suspect that many people think that attending the festival is indulgent, silly, or both, and thus [their suffering] is seen as a kind of poetic justice.”

I agree with Leach. The feeling of pleasure we take at the sight of the undeserving rich suffering, whether at Burning Man or during any given crypto implosion, is not a simple case of temporary psychopathy, as schadenfreude has been described. If it were, we might all be a bit less keen to talk about it in public. The reason we feel so good about laughing at these people’s expense is that we have convinced ourselves that they have brought it on themselves. Whether it’s because they are overprivileged elites, woke hippies or just godless heathens depends on your political viewpoint. But happily, there is something to hate for everyone.

We might not feel such contempt if we met them as individuals, of course. But we wouldn’t want to ruin our lovely enjoyment by doing that. The advantage of caricaturing them as bad, as we do with other groups that we disagree with, is that we can enjoy their pain from afar. With the news that the Fyre Festival — whose con-artist founder was sent to prison for defrauding investors of $27.4mn — is coming back next year, there might be more such treats in store.