BioNTech faces hundreds of German compensation claims for Covid-19 jab
Pharmaceuticals producer in first court hearing on Monday
BioNTech is facing a barrage of compensation claims in Germany brought by two law firms that allege their clients suffered lasting health damage from the company’s coronavirus vaccine.
The Mainz-based pharmaceuticals producer will on Monday face its first German court hearing over the claims in a case brought on behalf of a middle-aged medical worker.
She is seeking €150,000 in damages for symptoms including heart arrhythmia and brain fog that she says were caused after receiving the jab.
The challenge, in a regional court in Hamburg, is one of several hundred claims for compensation of up to €1mn being pursued by the two law firms.
The most prominent of the firms, the Düsseldorf-based Rogert & Ulbrich, is headed by Tobias Ulbrich, a specialist in transport and freight law who has railed against the vaccine makers on social media.
The other firm is Cäsar-Preller, which is also based in Mainz.
The firms successfully won damages for consumers from the German carmaker Volkswagen over its diesel emissions scandal.
Given that close to three-quarters of the 224mn vaccine doses administered in Germany were produced by BioNTech in collaboration with Pfizer, the vast majority of the claims are being brought against the Mainz-based company, which pioneered the use of messenger RNA in vaccines.
The German cases represent the biggest number of compensation claims that BioNTech has faced worldwide since it shot to fame during the pandemic.
Ulbrich is a controversial figure, who has claimed that the American billionaire Bill Gates wanted to use vaccination to reduce the population of Germany to 27mn people — a claim that a spokesman for his foundation said was “false”.
Ulbrich also claimed that blood tests on some of his clients have shown them to be suffering from a “vaccine-acquired immunodeficiency syndrome” or “V-AIDS” — a syndrome that respected scientists say is not real.
The lawyer told the Financial Times that German media reports painting him as a conspiracy theorist showed he was “doing a good job” of scaring the pharmaceutical companies.
Peer-reviewed studies have shown that side effects of Covid-19 vaccinations are rare but do exist, including four types of neurological complications and an inflammation of the heart known as myocarditis.
But the publicly listed BioNTech said it was confident that the cases would be dismissed, pointing to the fact that it has decided not to set aside provisions to cover possible compensation claims.
“Continuous monitoring of the vaccine’s safety profile and after more than 2.6bn doses of [the Covid-19 vaccine] administered worldwide has to date not identified potential side effects other than those already listed in the respective product information,” BioNTech said.
The company added that, in the Hamburg case, the plaintiff and her lawyers had failed to demonstrate a “causal relationship between the adverse events and the vaccine” rather than a coincidental one and described the lawsuit as “without merit”.
Ulbrich maintains that the burden of proof — and also the possible compensation — is lower in Germany than elsewhere and is confident that, particularly in hearings in Munich and Düsseldorf, his clients’ cases are strong.
A verdict against BioNTech would likely have limited direct financial damage on the company because of an EU legal shield that largely protected vaccine makers from legal liability if they caused unforeseen side effects, leaving national governments on the hook instead.
Still, the company has had to expand its use of extra law firms to deal with the increased caseload.
Both Rogert & Ulbrich and Cäsar-Preller reject accusations that they are exploiting the concerns of people who are unwell but have little chance of winning a successful legal challenge for their own financial gain.
They say that the fees they can charge in most cases are capped at about €7,000 and are often paid by their clients’ insurance. “It’s cost intensive,” said Cäsar-Preller owner Joachim Cäsar-Preller. “We have a big team. Half of the money goes to court.”
Droughts: when desserts make deserts, water tech is needed
Bridging demand and supply gap will require investments in new technologies
Spanish strawberries are a spring treat for northern Europeans. They are also a flashpoint in a broader scramble for access to dwindling water resources. German campaigners are calling for a boycott of “drought strawberries”. The illegal extraction of water for this crop has drained a once-thriving Andalucían wetland.
Water scarcity will be a defining characteristic of the next few decades, Lex believes. This will create new opportunities and new risks for investors.
Demand for fresh water is rising in tandem with population and prosperity. Climate change is cutting rainfall. While water stress in Europe as a whole has declined, Spain has been particularly hard hit: this April was the hottest and driest on record, extending a persistent drought.
By 2030, water demand will be 40 per cent higher than supply, according to a study by consultancy McKinsey. Bridging this gap will require investment into three main water technologies.
Water conservation is the lowest on the cost curve. It is particularly important in agriculture, which accounts for 70 per cent of water consumed globally. Some companies, like Israel’s Netafim, focus on drip irrigation. Others are developing drought-tolerant crops. State subsidies may be required to fund adaptation by poorer farmers.
Next up are technologies to treat and re-use water. Water scarcity poses an existential threat to businesses such as mines that are heavy users. Unless they can create closed-loop water systems, they risk losing their licenses to operate. This creates opportunities for “water-tech” entrepreneurs. The first water-tech unicorn, Gradiant, has devised new ways of purifying industrial waste water.
Furthest up the water-tech cost curve is desalination. This uses similar technologies to purification plants but sifts out smaller molecules. Over the last 15 years, the cost of making fresh water from seawater has declined from $1.50 to $0.50 per cubic meter. It will fall further as renewables become even cheaper. This will make desalination a genuine option for water-stressed coastal areas.
Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power has built the world’s largest plant in Abu Dhabi. Jefferies, a broker, says a number of companies offer exposure to the sector including Sweden’s Azelio AB and Japan’s Hitachi Zosen Corporation.
Big data projects and machine learning can help optimise all three technology types. US-based Xylem, for instance, sells sensor technologies, smart metering and data analytics for underground infrastructure.
In the past, water-tech adoption has proceeded at a glacial pace. The recent round of droughts may — finally — encourage investment to flow.
Barron’s Weekend Summary: Despite the underlying weakness, the S&P 500 SPX 0.11% index appeared expensive
Cover Story:
Despite the underlying weakness, the S&P 500 SPX 0.11% index appeared expensive, particularly given where profits appeared to be heading. Adding to the sense of unease, the index couldn’t seem to crack 4200, suggesting some unknown risk limiting the market’s upside. Yet through it all—the debt-ceiling standoff, a banking mini-crisis, and a potential earnings slump—the market has held its own and then some. And what the bears have apparently forgotten is that stocks are always looking forward, not back. All of the hand-wringing over a possible recession can’t hide the fact that the S&P 500 already suffered through a bear market in 2022.
Interview:
-Recently, Barron’spoke to Sara Devereux, global head of the fixed-income group at Vanguard. Devereux spoke with Barron’s about the outlook for the US economy and inflation and where she sees opportunities now. Devereux joined Vanguard in 2019 from Goldman Sachs, where she spent more than two decades specializing in mortgage-backed securities and structured products. This year, she was recognized by Barron’s for the second time as one of the 100 most influential women in US finance. She believes that “Bonds Are Back.”
“I haven’t seen this kind of opportunity in a long time, after a decade of yields at the zero lower bound,” says Devereux, whose unit has more than $2T in assets under management. Vanguard is the world’s second-largest asset manager, with $7.7T in assets under management. In bonds it is best known for index funds. But it is also one of the biggest providers of US active bond funds, with $890B in assets, and Devereux is helping lead the charge in active management.
Tech Trader:
-Last week Apple presented the Vision Pro virtual-reality headset, which won’t actually be available until sometime next year. But, more importantly, it was what it didn’t present that was surprising. Apple managed to deliver a more than two-hour keynote and not say the words “generative AI.” This is radically different in a world where Intuit announced a potentially game-changing AI strategy, Cisco Systems (CSCO) unveiled new AI features in its WebEx communications software, and Adobe (ADBE) disclosed plans to start charging companies who use Firefly, the company’s growing suite of generative AI tools.
The Trader:
-Oil production costs appear to dropping as the current craze continues to subside, inflation abates, and new development remains limited. Prices for the tubes and pipes used in oil production and transport are already down over 20% over the past year. Costs of various oil-field services—which reset periodically when contracts are renewed—have been trending lower. Fracking machinery and sand prices are holding in there for now, but appear set to fall as availability improves. Devon Energy and Marathon Oil (MRO) are among the biggest potential beneficiaries of the energy price trend, given the majority of their generally shorter-term drilling contracts rolling over in the second half of the year.
-When it comes to picking the stocks that treat their investors the best, don’t rely on dividend yield alone. The highest dividend yield in the S&P 500 these days belongs to Altria Group, maker of Marlboro cigarettes, with an 8.4% yield. But there’s more to cash returns than just the dividend, such as buybacks and debt paydowns, which increase the share of a business’ value that accrues to equity holders. Together, they’re known as shareholder yield. Altria does a pretty good job of returning cash to shareholders. Its quarterly dividend payments come in at about $6.8B a year, while it also spent some $1.8B on share buybacks in 2022 and reduced its net debt by close to $1.1B. Add it up, and Altria returned $9.7B to shareholders last year, versus Altria’s current market capitalization of $80.5B—good for a trailing shareholder yield of 12%.
Features:
-While China appears to lag behind the US in AI technology—for now—experts say US lawmakers must keep the nation in mind when deciding the extent of AI regulation. That arms race—along with China’s own heightened regulation and some high-profile AI stumbles—is leaving investors on the sidelines until the technology matures in the world’s second-largest economy.
AI’s complex nature and meteoric development has bred confusion in both countries among government officials, investors, and even companies trying to get into the AI arena. US lawmakers have asked AI firms themselves what regulations are needed. There is also widespread disagreement over how much Washington could hobble China’s programs with a more severe ban on the semiconductors that are crucial for AI. Last year, the US banned sales to China of an industry-leading Nvidia chip central to many AI programs.
-NET Power is an unusual clean-energy company that has developed a natural-gas power plant that makes it easy to capture carbon dioxide released by the burning of natural gas. Unlike current plants, which burn natural gas in the air and produce pollutants like nitrogen oxides as well as CO2, NET Power’s method produces emissions of only CO2 and water. The plants burn natural gas in pure oxygen, and the resulting high-pressure, liquefied CO2 spins turbines to make electricity. The CO2 is then buried or used for energy production. The company went public this past week when it merged with Rice Acquisition II, a special-purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, formed by Danny Rice, an entrepreneur, energy executive, and member of the well-regarded energy-focused Rice family.
European Trader:
In light of the collapse of Credit Suisse, as well as the failures and cumbersome resolutions of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank SBNY +8.33% , and First Republic Bank FRCB –5.50% , we believe that renewed calls to rethink and redesign the financial architecture within which banks operate will finally gain traction. This will imply, at least in the US, tighter regulation that requires banks to have more capital and hold more liquidity. Banks’ liquidity-intermediation capacity will likely shrink further, and some traditional activities will likely go into private markets and nonbank lending.
Emerging Markets:
No updates this week
Commodities
-When the commercial traders are net short copper futures in a big way, that is a pretty good topping sign for PMI. As the economy weakens, those traders move from net short as a group to net long, and the PMI follows that path lower. The nice thing about this relationship is that the COT Report data come out weekly, whereas the monthly PMI data are released with a lag. So we can get a clue about what the PMI data are going to look like. The implication of the big net long position that the commercial traders are holding now in copper futures is that we ought to see a price rebound for copper, part of a rebound for the economy, and that should eventually show up in the monthly PMI numbers...
Streetwise:
-Jack Hough believes Campbell’s has a spicy new chicken soup, and it could hold the key to stock market gains from here. The S&P 500 is up 12% year to date despite bank failures, recession fears, a narrowly averted Treasury default, and now Canada smoking Manhattan like a brisket. But gains have been concentrated at the top. Among the 10 largest index members, the median gain is 39%. For the rest, it’s less than 1%. That’s owed to artificial-intelligence buzz. I don’t want to overstate AI’s significance—that’s venture capitalist Marc Andreessen’s job. It’s possibly the most important thing civilization has created, he writes, “certainly on par with electricity,” and “probably beyond” it. I plan to verify that on ChatGPT as soon as my laptop recharges.
Weekend Papers Summary
NEW YORK TIMES
-Trump put national secrets at risk, prosecutors say. The indictment lays out evidence for historic charges. Donald Trump illegally kept files concerning US nuclear programs and the nation’s vulnerabilities to military attack, the 49-page indictment showed. Prosecutors also said the former president displayed the material to people without security clearances and willingly hid it from investigators.
-The indictment shows that Donald Trump was more cavalier in handling classified files than previously known.
-In his first remarks about the indictment, Gov. Ron DeSantis offered a backhanded defense of former President Trump.
-A Trump-appointed judge who showed the former president favor was assigned to the documents case against him.
-Two lawyers quit Donald Trump’s legal team a day after the indictment, leaving the defense in a state of chaos.
-Battles rage as Ukraine tries to retake Russian-occupied territory.
-Military analysts and US officials said it was too soon to judge the success of Ukraine’s offensive, which is looking for weaknesses to exploit.
-Boris Johnson resigns from parliament. A committee of the House of Commons has been investigating whether the former prime minister of Britain had lied to lawmakers about lockdown-breaking parties.
-Canada’s ability to prevent forest fires lags behind the need. Provincial firefighting agencies are stretched thin; there is no national agency and it’s hard to get approval for controlled burns.
-George Santos federal case. Santos pleads not guilty.
-Santos says his family helped bail him out (just don’t ask who it was.)
-Representative George Santos of New York said his relatives helped guarantee his bail, but asked a judge to keep their names sealed out of privacy concerns.
-4 Missing Children Found Alive After 40 Days in Colombian Jungle
Rescuers had been searching for the children — aged 13, 9, 4 and 1 — ever since they survived a plane crash that killed the three adults on board.
Investor linked to Paxton’s impeachment is charged with lying to lenders. The real estate investor at the center of the impeachment case against the attorney general of Texas, Ken Paxton, was jailed at the request of the FBI.
-A Political Earthquake in Texas. The highest levels of Texas politics are in chaos, with Republicans in the Legislature taking the extraordinary step of impeaching Attorney General Ken Paxton, one of the most outspoken right-wing figures in the state.
-NY lawmakers pass clean slate act as session fizzles to an end. As the 2023 session ends, the State Legislature passed a bill sealing old criminal records, but failed to reach a deal on a housing package.
-The Midwest-based health system had withheld care for patients who had outstanding bills. It will not restore care for those who have already lost access.
-What Do Binance US’s New Rules on Trading Dollars Mean for Customers? The company said that it would no longer allow trades with US dollars on its platform. Customers were urged to withdraw funds by Tuesday. Weeks of ethnic violence in the remote northeastern Indian state of Manipur has claimed about 100 lives. More than 35,000 people have become refugees.
THE FINANCIAL TIMES
-Partners at Odey Asset Management said that founder Crispin Odey would leave the firm after 13 women accused him of sexual misconduct. The high-profile financier and his firm have been at the centre of a growing crisis after the Financial Times reported on Thursday that 13 women alleged Odey had sexually assaulted or harassed them in various incidents over a 25-year period.
-Rishi Sunak is facing three challenging by-elections in the coming weeks after former UK cabinet minister Nigel Adams announced he was quitting the House of Commons immediately.
The decision by Adams — an ally of former premier Boris Johnson — raised immediate speculation about a co-ordinated attempt to undermine the Downing Street incumbent.
-Federal prosecutors unsealed an indictment charging Donald Trump with 37 criminal counts on Friday, accusing the former US president of repeatedly lying and obfuscating to illegally retain some of the government’s most sensitive national security secrets.
-Boris Johnson has announced he is quitting the Commons immediately, in a dramatic move that triggers a by-election the Tories could lose and that heaps severe pressure on Rishi Sunak.
-Microsoft is moving some of its best artificial intelligence researchers from China to Canada in a move that threatens to gut an essential training ground for the Asian country’s tech talent. The Beijing-based Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) has begun seeking visas to move top AI experts from China’s capital to its institute in Vancouver, said four people with knowledge of the plans.
-Rather than uniting Russia’s liberals, the war in Ukraine has deepened existing rifts and added new controversies, such as backing a military defeat for Moscow and Kiev’s demands for reparations, which some see as politically toxic among Russians.
“They have these infights, and maybe it will take some time,” said Andrius Kubilius, a Lithuanian MEP who invited the opposition groups to the European parliament this week. “It would be good if they were able to show more unity around some kind of strategy.”
-Serie A, Italy’s top football league has started talks with private equity firms over the sale of a stake in its media rights business as it considers options to secure funding. Serie A is working with advisers at Lazard on a possible deal, according to people familiar with the details.
-Nigeria’s new president has suspended the country’s central bank governor, marking the end of an era of unorthodox policies at the west African institution. Bola Tinubu, who took office on May 29, removed central bank chief Godwin Emefiele, with “immediate effect”, according to a statement from the office of the government secretary on Friday night.
-Jamie Dimon should be forced to undergo a second round of questions about JPMorgan Chase’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, according to lawyers for a woman who claims the bank is liable for the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of the late financier.
NY POST
-Target shareholders took a beating again on Friday, with the big-box retailer’s stock falling 3.26%.
The backlash from the Pride controversy coincides with the stock losing over $15B in market value since mid-May.
-Podcaster Joe Rogan blasted Bud Light and Target, saying many Americans have decided they have had “enough.” With massive companies facing public backlash for engaging in woke messaging, Rogan’s guest, standup comedian Theo Von, proposed an app that could show customers of a business “where they put their political money.”
“A little of that is going on right now with all the woke s—,” Rogan responded. “Target lost billions of dollars because they tried to have this Pride selection.”
-The Saudi crown prince privately threatened “major economic consequences” against the US last fall if the Biden administration retaliated against its decision to slash oil production, a new report revealed.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman made the threat after President Biden promised unspecified “consequences” for Saudi Arabia over the kingdom’s decision to cut oil production during a time of high energy prices, according to a classified document obtained by The Washington Post.
-The Secret Service will not seek “special accommodations” ahead of former President Donald Trump’s arraignment in a Miami federal courthouse on charges related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents, a spokesman for the agency said Friday. “While operational security precludes us from going into specifics, the Secret Service will not seek any special accommodations outside of what would be required to ensure the former president’s continued safety,” Secret Service Chief of Communications Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement on Friday.
Apple’s Vision Pro Isn’t the Future
The new mixed-reality headset is an alarming misfire. Has Apple lost its innovation mojo?
I’M NOT A gambler, but I’d bet everything that Apple’s Vision Pro will flop.
When the $3,499 mixed-reality headset goes on sale in 2024, no doubt diehard Apple enthusiasts and VR/AR hobbyists will bring their sleeping bags and line up outside the Apple Store doors, hooting and hollering and having a ball.
Maybe some gamers will get on board.
But the rest of us? No. Absolutely not. Don’t be ridiculous. This is not a “revolutionary” gadget, no matter how confident Tim Cook looks when he says it is. It’s a rare misfire, and a sign that Apple is losing its ability to turn tech-geek novelties into normie must-haves. It doesn’t augur the future so much as suggest that Cupertino doesn’t have a clear view forward.
“Every successful Apple product of the past two decades has disappeared into our lives in some way—the iPhone into our pockets, the iPad into our purses, the Apple Watch living on our wrists, and the AirPods resting in our ears,” my colleague Lauren Goode wrote this week, after demoing the device at WWDC. “But the Vision Pro is also unlike almost every other modern Apple product in one crucial way: It doesn’t disappear.” Instead, Goode wrote, the device settles onto your face, hides your eyes, “sensory organs that are a crucial part of the lived human experience.” The same was true of all virtual reality headsets and augmented reality glasses, she conceded, but the Vision Pro marked the first time an Apple product had made such an intrusion into people’s lives.
Reading Lauren’s review converted me into a full-fledged Vision Pro doomer. It drives home the reality that an Apple headset, no matter how nifty its specs, is still a big honking gizmo plonked between its wearer and the rest of the world, inherently a barrier more than a conduit.
Although Apple is positioning it as disruptive, Vision Pro is the latest in a long string of high-profile, splashy headsets designed to bring augmented reality, virtual reality, or both to the masses. Its predecessors include Meta’s Quest Pro, Microsoft’s HoloLens, the Magic Leap 2, and Google Glass—four mega-hyped headsets pitched as paradigm-shifting, all of which whiffed. Vision Pro is the newest, most advanced iteration of the idea, no doubt. That doesn’t change the challenge it faces, which is the same challenge that has hobbled every VR and AR headset that came before it: the whole alternative-reality headset thing.
As my colleague Boone Ashworth recently reported, there’s ample evidence that people don’t want to spend lots of time wearing this type of device, for aesthetic reasons (snorkel mask for dorks), practical reasons (cumbersome, activity-limiting), and for social reasons (it’s an isolation chamber you slide over your eyes to experience an individualized simulacrum of the world instead of our shared reality). The very basic truth that the appetite for daily-use headsets is simply not there has already damaged the Vision Pro’s reception; the normally rapturous public response to a big new Apple announcement has been tempered with skepticism this time around, with plenty of people pointing out that the VR/AR market is already littered with bold-named failures.
Even the more enthusiastic assessments of Vision Pro tend to fall back on the argument that Apple is simply too good at hardware to fail. It’s not like a regular tech company, it’s a cool tech company. “It could be that the market just needed Apple to arrive,” mused The New York Times’ Kevin Roose, for example.
Apple has an undeniably impressive history of making formerly niche gadgets into ubiquities—even if said niche gadget is kind of silly.
I have AirPod Pros, and I wear them for like five hours a day even though they hurt my ears and I keep accidentally putting them through my washing machine, and there was really nothing in the world wrong with the old wired headphones they used to give you for free with an iPhone. Apple’s influence! Nobody in this great big world of ours actually needs an iPad except for parents of toddlers on airplanes, but they’re popular as hell anyways. Apple’s influence, again!
If any company could make mixed-reality VR/AR headsets look appealing for daily wear, Apple would certainly be a prime contender.
But that would be its heaviest lift yet, and Apple isn’t the same company it used to be. When was the last behavior-shifting new Apple product launched, the type that gets absorbed into a daily fixture? It certainly hasn’t happened since Jony Ive left in 2019. Maybe it was AirPods, in 2016. Apple’s track record is solid, yes. But AirPods came out seven years ago. The company’s best times are up against different competition now, and the path it has to forge here is far trickier than convincing the plebes that stupid Bluetooth earbuds that are seriously so easy to accidentally put through the washing machine are superior to wired headphones that never require charging.
There’s a reason even Apple’s own employees have expressed doubts about Vision Pro: It’s a tough sell on a conceptual level, so no matter what the execution looks like, it’d be difficult to pull off. To make matters worse, the execution is flawed. If Apple had found a way to make a mixed-reality headset that weighed 4 ounces, or functioned more like regular glasses, maybe. Right now, though, it’s offering a marginally sleeker upgrade to a decidedly uncool-looking genre of headset. The nerd goggles look like nerd goggles.
The silly part is: Apple knows this. As Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman pointed out, it did not release any photos of Tim Cook or any other high-ranking Apple figures wearing the device. “There is no reason other than meme control for Tim Cook to be standing next to the biggest product of his tenure rather than wearing. In fact, it just looks strange to not be wearing it,” Gurman tweeted. Strange—and telling.
Imagine Apple execs pacing in front of a bulletin board covered with hundreds of copies of the photo of Robert Scoble showering with his Google Glass and brainstorming how to do the exact opposite while promoting their own headset, never realizing that Robert Scoble showering with his Google Glass was a symptom of releasing a terminally corny product and not the cause.
Despite the minimal presence of memeable images of execs or media with the headsets strapped on their faces, the promotional materials Apple selected to explain its uses underlines that primary issue: This is an antisocial device, one which the average person would be wholly reasonable to reject and even ridicule.
The company is getting ribbed online for one promotional image in particular, depicting a father with his young children wearing the device in their home. As the children play on the ground, the father looks on wearing his Vision Pro. Or maybe he’s ignoring them and watching Avatar. Or gabbing on an immersive version of FaceTime. It looks cartoonishly dystopian, more like a marketing still for an especially obvious episode of Black Mirror than something a tech company would deliberately select to allure people—unless their target market was emotionally dysregulated parents.
We are living through an era when tech’s power players are getting it wrong on a colossal scale and with alarming frequency. Think of FTX. Or NFTs. Or crypto’s current meltdown. Or Meta’s entire flailing pivot to the metaverse. Big Tech and its power players are not infallible, and this yassified Oculus is proof that even Apple can make missteps. One can only hope that the unavoidable failure of Vision Pro might clear the company’s sights, galvanizing actual innovation instead of this disappointing foray into gimmickry.
Italy’s Serie A draws private equity interest for media rights stake
Previous talks were derailed by opposition from individual clubs and their executives
Italy’s top football league has started talks with private equity firms over the sale of a stake in its media rights business as it considers options to secure funding.
Serie A is working with advisers at Lazard on a possible deal, according to people familiar with the details.
Private equity owners may look to purchase around a 10 to 20 per cent stake in the league’s media rights that could net Serie A a multibillion-euro investment, one of the people said.
That process comes alongside a separate series of negotiations. Two other people close to the talks said Serie A would first negotiate with broadcasters a five-year media rights contract starting from 2024.
Talks with the private equity firms will only move forward if the clubs fail to agree on a price with media companies such as Sky and DAZN, the people said.
A deadline for broadcasters to turn in their bids will expire next week. People close to Serie A expect the bids to be below the clubs’ asking target and anticipate that negotiations over price will extend into July.
“It’s early days but we hope to ultimately find an agreement on price with the broadcasters,” said the owner of one of the football clubs. “In which case we won’t need additional funds.”
Only if those talks fail will Serie A begin exploring other options, the people said.
A group of investment firms is expected to be among the interested parties in a media rights stake sale and discussions have begun with at least one lender that would help finance any deal, some of the people said.
Italian football clubs have long been reluctant to give up ownership of their media rights. An attempt led by private equity firm CVC to buy a minority stake in the media rights business for €1.6bn was rejected by the clubs in 2021.
Any deal is likely to be fraught with complications, despite continued interest in sports media rights from financial investors.
Serie A has held talks with private equity firms on multiple occasions before but opposition from individual clubs and their executives derailed negotiations.
In an interview last year, Serie A president Lorenzo Casini said investments in football infrastructure, such as stadiums, by foreign investors snapping up Italian clubs could also benefit the value of the league’s media rights, particularly outside Italy.
An initial bid by CVC at the end of 2020 also envisaged the construction and upkeep of stadiums across Italy through a new infrastructure fund, as well as a 20 per cent stake in the media business.
The Italian league, however, remains in dire need of fresh funds as its revenues continue to trail significantly behind other main European leagues such as England’s Premier League and Germany’s Bundesliga.
The Bundesliga last month rejected an offer to sell a stake in the league’s media and commercial rights to private equity firms. Although most clubs voted in favour of the offer, the outcome fell short of the required two-thirds majority ultimately derailing the funds’ second attempt to buy a stake in the German football league’s coveted media business.
Other European leagues such as La Liga in Spain and France’s Ligue 1 have clinched media rights deals with private equity firms after the pandemic hit their revenues.
FIS acquires banking-as-a-service startup Bond
Consolidation continues apace in the world of fintech. FIS, the fintech giant that runs a wide range of payment, banking and investment services, has acquired Bond, a startup that specializes in embedded finance, multiple sources confirmed today.
Fintech Business Weekly’s Jason Mikula broke the news last week that the deal was in the works. Our sources confirm that the deal has now closed, as of today.
FIS is not sharing how much it paid for Bond, a San Francisco-based BaaS (banking-as-a-service) startup. But as a point of reference, PitchBook notes that Bond was valued at $182 million the last time it raised money, in 2020. Since 2019, Bond has raised a total of $42 million in funding, according to Crunchbase.
It has an impressive list of backers. Coatue Management led the company’s last round, a $32 million Series A in 2020, which also included participation from Mastercard, Goldman Sachs, Canaan Partners, B Capital Group and former Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack.
BaaS, sometimes called embedded finance, helps brands (sometimes those well outside the world of finance) integrate financial services like credit cards and bank accounts to in turn sell on those services to their customers.
Touting “an AI-powered infrastructure,” Bond works to help digital brands – including other fintechs such as Pocketbook and Everest – offer “personalized and compliant banking products.”
With roughly 30 employees, Bond’s focus has been on building APIs and software that enables commercial and consumer credit card solutions, as well as debit cards and accounts.
According to an internal memo by FIS viewed by TechCrunch, the FIS and Bond leadership teams “will determine how the two companies will work together,” including how FIS will bring Bond’s capabilities into FIS’s existing relationships.
FIS SVP of Platforms Himal Makwana, in partnership with the company’s integration management office, will be leading post-purchase planning activities, the memo added.
It’s not clear why Bond has opted to get acquired, but the deal comes amid a very unsettled period in the worlds of technology, venture funding and financial services. Funding activity has largely ground to a halt in the world of startups compared to previous years, which partly contributed to the collapse of two major banks focusing on the tech sector.
It’s not clear what the financial state of play was at Bond, but it’s notable that it hadn’t raised money since 2020, and amid a decline in fintech venture funding in particular, M&A may have become an interesting option for the startup.
On the other side of the equation, bigger incumbents like FIS, as well as larger fintechs, have been making a number of moves to buy companies like fintechs to bolt on talent and technology in a race to update their own products and services amid the competitive landscape.
Earlier this year, Marqeta acquired financial infrastructure startup Power Finance in a $275 million deal
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JP Morgan closed its acquisition of Aumni. And Brazilian fintech infra company Pismo is said to be in the midst of being courted by the likes of Visa and Mastercard in a reported $1 billion transaction.
Not every M&A deal works out well, of course, with the biggest often being the hardest to digest.
FIS made one of the largest-ever acquisitions in the world of payments when it acquired WorldPay for about
$43 billion in 2019
.
That deal never really came up trumps, though. In February of this year, FIS confirmed that it would be spinning WorldPay off.
Tesla’s Supercharger network will strain under the weight of GM and Ford deals
After the GM and Ford deals, Tesla will have to double its Supercharger network in under three years or risk owner backlash
If Tesla wants to maintain its Supercharger network’s reputation, it’s got some work to do.
The automaker has recently agreed to open a large portion of its chargers to Ford and GM starting next year. The move promises to bolster Tesla’s bottom line as it begins to monetize a costly capital investment, but it also risks upsetting existing and future owners, who will soon have to contend with more competition for charging space.
Currently, Tesla drivers can charge at the largest and most well-distributed network in the U.S that utilizes some of the sleekest hardware and technology.
Given Tesla’s total fleet size in the U.S., there are only about 80 cars competing for any given charging stall. That low number has meant that wait times are usually minimal to nonexistent. (Holidays and weekends at high-traffic locations are exceptions, of course.) Tesla’s vehicle-charger ratio is more than twice as good as its competitors combined.
But the Ford and GM deals throw those numbers into doubt by opening more than 12,000 Supercharger stalls out of the 19,210 that Tesla has installed to date.
Both GM and Ford have a large number of EVs on the road today — about 120,000 and 90,000, respectively — and they have plans to ramp up North American production significantly.
Tesla owners will likely begin to feel some pain next year.
Given GM and Ford’s production targets, it’s likely that the two automakers will put nearly a quarter million more EVs on the road this year and nearly three-quarters of a million next year.
By 2025, they could potentially be selling a combined 1.5 million EVs annually.
That would bring their combined EV fleet to somewhere between 2.5 million to 3 million vehicles by 2025.
The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds: CleanCapital and Upstream Bio Lead Huge Week
It was a big, big week in funding, with eight rounds topping $100 million and the top two totaling $700 million. Biotech and health care again saw several huge rounds — taking six spots on this week’s list. However, cleantech, cyber and even the insurance sector saw some meaningful cash.
1. CleanCapital, $500M, clean energy: Cleantech led the way this week, thanks to this monster round. New York-based CleanCapital, a solar and storage developer that invests in early-stage projects, locked up a $500 million commitment from Canadian insurer Manulife Investment Management. CleanCapital will use the money to fund early-stage solar and storage development and acquire other renewable energy assets in the U.S. The company also announced it has now deployed more than $1 billion to fund operating, new construction, and early-stage solar and storage development. Founded in 2015, the company has received about $1.1 billion, per Crunchbase.
2. Upstream Bio, $200M, biotech: It was almost exactly a year ago when Waltham, Massachusetts-based Upstream Bio locked up a $200 million Series A. This week it’s back for another $200 million; a Series B led jointly by Enavate Sciences and Venrock Healthcare Capital Partners. Upstream Bio is developing an antibody that targets thymic stromal lymphopoietin and its receptors that can inflame when things like smoke or allergens are introduced into the environment. The treatment could be useful to those with asthma.
Founded in 2004, the company has now raised $400 million, per Crunchbase.
3. Blackpoint Cyber, $190M, cybersecurity: Cybersecurity, like most sectors, has experienced a slowdown when it comes to venture funding. However, that did not stop Maryland-based Blackpoint Cyber from cashing in. The startup, which offers a security suite of products to managed service providers, raised a $190 million growth investment led by Bain Capital Tech Opportunities.
Founded in 2014, the company has now raised more than $200 million, per Crunchbase.
4. Alkeus Pharmaceuticals, $150M, biotech: Every week, one needs not to go very far down this list to find a big biotech raise. Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Alkeus Pharmaceuticals made the list with a $150 million Series B led by Bain Capital Life Sciences. The company specializes in pharmaceuticals to fight Stargardt disease, which is a leading cause of blindness in children and young adults. In addition to the new funding, Alkeus has also named Dr. Joshua Boger, the founder of Vertex Pharmaceuticals, its executive chairman.
5. Bitterroot Bio, $145M, biotech: Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for men, women and many ethnic groups and races in the U.S. and worldwide. Ideally, Bitterroot Bio would like to change that. The Palo Alto, California-based company is focused on novel immunotherapies in cardiovascular disease, and launched from stealth this week with a $145 million Series A led by Arch Venture Partners and Deerfield Management. The company, founded in 2021, hopes to use immunology — including the identification of novel targets and the development of innovative protein therapies — to fight the deadly disease.
6. Incline P&C Group, $125M, insurance: Austin, Texas-based Incline P&C Group, an insurance program market services firm, locked up a $125 million investment from Braemont Capital. Founded in 2015, this is the firm’s first outside raise, per Crunchbase.
7. (tied) Acepodia, $100M, biotech: Alameda, California-based clinical-stage cancer biotech firm Acepedia announced a $100 million Series D financing led by Digital Mobile Venture.
Founded in 2016, the company has now raised $256 million, per Crunchbase.
7. (tied) Charm Industrial, $100M, cleantech: San Francisco-based carbon removal technology company Charm Industrial raised a $100 million Series B led by General Catalyst. Founded in 2018, this is the company’s first outside funding, per Crunchbase.
9. Upperline Health, $58.4M, health care: Nashville, Tennessee-based Upperline Health, a provider network for specialty care, raised $58.4 million in new capital led by Crestline.
Founded in 2016, the company has now raised $137 million, per Crunchbase.
10. Kate Therapeutics, $51M, biotech: San Diego-based Kate Therapeutics, a gene therapy company, emerged from stealth with a $51 million Series A financing co-led by founding investors Westlake Village BioPartners and Versant Ventures.
Big global deals
Once again, even though U.S.-based startups cleaned up this week with venture dollars, the largest round came from across the pond.
- U.K.-based Gigaclear, a developer of ultra-fast broadband networks based on pure fiber technology, raised a venture round of more than $450 million.