TheChek News Flow

Yachtmaker Azimut Benetti seeks to steady customer nerves after Bayesian suit

Chair says Bayesian manufacturer’s legal challenge against Mike Lynch’s estate is ‘very specific to one shipbuilder’

The owner of the world’s largest luxury yacht builder has sought to reassure customers that an unprecedented €456mn lawsuit over the sinking of Mike Lynch’s Bayesian was “very specific to one shipbuilder”.

Last year, The Italian Sea Group (TISG), owner of Bayesian manufacturer Perini Navi, sued Lynch’s estate and members of the yacht’s crew, claiming the disaster caused severe reputational and commercial damage to the brand. Lynch’s estate has previously dismissed the claim as “cynical”.

Giovanna Vitelli, chair of Azimut Benetti, told the FT that it was “unheard of” for a yachtmaker to take legal action against a client amid an ongoing investigation.

She described the sinking of the Bayesian off the coast of Sicily in 2024, which killed seven people including UK tech tycoon Lynch and his daughter, as “a great mystery”, with investigators yet to establish whether the disaster was caused by human error or a design flaw.

Perini Navi said it has not sold a single vessel since the disaster. A preliminary report by the UK’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch identified structural “vulnerabilities” which may have contributed to the catastrophe.

“This is a course of action we’ve never seen before in the industry, and I want to reassure owners that it is highly unusual,” Vitelli said.

The legal action challenges long-established assumptions about the relationship between yacht builders and owners. Brokers say some clients have enquired about insurance protection against the risk of litigation by a shipyard following a major incident, while lawyers have warned clients should place greater emphasis on the financial strength and legal approach of the builder they choose.

Milan-listed TISG has faced pressures beyond the Bayesian incident.

It entered a court-supervised restructuring process earlier this year after its capital fell below the legal minimum and the group uncovered significant unauthorised cost overruns on yacht projects. On Monday, chief executive and majority shareholder Giovanni Costantino resigned, amid an ongoing effort to restructure the group.

In June five yacht owners successfully challenged court protections awarded to TISG that temporarily barred them from terminating their contracts, underscoring how financial distress at a shipyard can quickly spill over into disputes with customers.

TISG declined to comment.

Despite TISG’s problems, the superyacht industry remains one of Italy’s strongest manufacturing success stories. Although new orders have moderated from post-pandemic highs, demand for ultra-luxury yachts has proved resilient, while investors continue to place billion-euro bets on yachting infrastructure. 

This month, CVC agreed to sell marina group D-Marin for between €1bn and €1.5bn, the latest in a string of high-profile infrastructure deals highlighting the strategic value of the global yachting ecosystem.

“Europe has a chronic shortage of premium berths and marinas but it’s an important part of the yachting experience,” said Vitelli, who owns the Ligurian marina of Varazze operated by D-Marin.

Italy’s shipmakers account for roughly 56 per cent of global superyacht orders by volume, while the domestic boating industry generated more than €5bn in shipbuilding revenues last year.

Revenues at privately owned Azimut Benetti rose 15 per cent to €1.5bn in 2025 and the group has an order book worth roughly €2.6bn. Vitelli also revealed that the family-owned group’s net equity exceeded €500mn, a figure that had not previously been made public.

“Given the worst-case backdrop of tariffs, war and sanctions on Russia, we’re pleased with our performance,” she said.

Italy’s yachting industry exports about 90 per cent of its production.

Vitelli said US tariffs had only a limited impact on Azimut Benetti’s largest yachts, many of which are not delivered under the US flag and therefore do not pay tax in the country.

The company saw a slowdown in the smaller owner-operated segment around 50 feet, but said it had mitigated much of the disruption by accelerating shipments to the US ahead of the introduction of 15 per cent tariffs. 

“The US shows resilience but we remain cautious,” she said.  

Defence giants provide record backing for military start-ups

As drones and autonomous systems transform the battlefield, traditional defence companies start to act more like venture capitalists

The world’s largest defence companies have invested a record amount into military start-ups this year as they try to adapt to the rapidly evolving face of modern warfare.

So-called defence primes, with longstanding ties to western governments and militaries including Lockheed Martin and BAE Systems, have participated in a record $4.1bn in venture capital rounds so far this year, according to data compiled by Dealroom.

“The recent conflicts have highlighted the need for a modern type of warfare whereby existing established platforms coexist alongside new disruptive technologies,” said Gwen Billon, a partner at advisory-focused investment bank PJT, who helps lead aerospace and defence coverage.

“New defence technologies are here to stay and defence primes want to make sure they have exposure to these technologies.”

That shift was on display at this year’s flagship industry event in Farnborough outside London, where a record half of the 1,636 exhibitors were from the defence sector, where traditionally civil aerospace dominated.

Defence technology start-ups, which used the event to showcase their latest offerings, were being courted by bankers and potential investors, among them the biggest names in military hardware.

Governments have stepped up military spending in the face of recent conflicts, in particular the war in Ukraine, which has underlined the need for weapons that are faster and cheaper to produce, from interceptor missiles to autonomous drones.

The total value of global defence-related deals, including mergers and acquisitions and fundraisings, has already topped $40bn this year, putting it on track to smash the previous full-year record of $59bn in 2019, according to data compiled by Dealogic.

The biggest arms manufacturers are increasingly having to compete with more nimble, technology-focused rivals looking to ride a wave of increased government spending and rapid transformation. The total raised by defence and security start-ups has reached $39.8bn so far this year, according to data compiled by Dealroom.

Having once been able to concentrate on their core markets of fighter aircraft, battleships and small arms, defence primes are instead having to adapt to think more like venture capital investors.

French defence technology group Thales plans to buy Paris-listed Exail Technologies in a deal valuing the maritime robotics and navigation company at €3.9bn. Thales beat fellow French group Safran to clinch the deal. That same day, Lockheed Martin outbid rivals including Thales to buy naval technology group Ultra Maritime from private equity firm Advent for $3.45bn.

These bidding wars show increased appetite for large defence conglomerates to bolster their defence tech portfolios through M&A as well as investments in large fundraisings.

The high level of activity was also reflected by record attendance at Farnborough from the financial sector, with more than 650 people, including investors, bankers and funds from 350 organisations, according to event organisers.

Earlier this month, German drone maker Quantum Systems raised $1.2bn in fresh funds at a valuation of about $8bn, backed by investors including Airbus. British maritime defence company Kraken Technology on July 9 announced a fundraising of $175mn at the so-called unicorn valuation of $1bn, backed by investors including Rheinmetall. 

One executive from a top European defence company and an aerospace adviser said investors were mostly quizzing companies about their defence tech and the future of warfare based on lessons from Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and the US battle with Iran, where aerial and naval drones and countermeasures have played a growing role.

The defence primes have increased investments into research and development activities, as well as into venture capital funds to gain early-stage exposure to potentially lucrative technologies. Thirteen of the world’s biggest arms makers, excluding Airbus and Boeing due to their large civil operations, are estimated to have increased their internal R&D spending by more than 25 per cent to $11.6bn from 2021 to 2026, according to analysis by Vertical Research Partners.

Britain’s BAE recently committed €50mn towards two funds headed by Lakestar and Expeditions, two of Europe’s best-known backers of defence start-ups. 

Similarly, Lockheed, the world’s largest arms maker by revenue, said last week it would invest at least $100mn in UK and European defence technology start-ups. The move followed plans to boost its start-up investment arm from $400mn to $1bn.

Frank St John, chief operating officer at Lockheed, told the FT that the company saw an “untapped capability here in Europe” in terms of defence tech, adding that Lockheed wanted to “water that garden and see what comes up”.

As part of the fund, the US group pairs start-up companies with its engineers working on new projects to see how it can “get their technology to fit into our offerings”, he said. 

Airbus’s German-based defence and space business said last week it had become the anchor investor in a new fund targeting technologies for both civil and military use. The E2D fund, with a target size of €500mn, will target investments in air, maritime and space.

The European aerospace and defence group has formed partnerships with several defence tech start-ups, including Ukraine’s SkyFall and Estonian missile maker Frankenburg Technologies.

Andreas Reinecke, head of sales for defence digital and cyber at Airbus Defence and Space, said recent conflicts, including Ukraine, had underlined the pace of technological change in modern warfare.

For Airbus, he said, it was therefore “essential” to have a “viable partner system” with smaller, more agile players, to be able to keep up with the rapid changes. 

Deadly storm in Chile disrupts copper mines and raises AI supply concerns

Metals boom is reliant on high-altitude, declining mines that are exposed to increasing weather volatility

A deadly storm in Chile threatens copper production and has added to concerns over the industry’s ability to supply the metal crucial to the AI boom.

Canadian base metals group Lundin Mining suspended operations at its Caserones copper–molybdenum operation in Chile’s Atacama region last week, where heavy snowfall had disrupted power supplies, while copper miner Antofagasta paused mining and processing for several days at its Minera Los Pelambres site.

The extreme weather caused flash flooding, as well as heavy snow at higher altitudes where some major copper mines are located. The storm has killed at least 13 people, according to officials.

Snow also affected some operations at state-run copper miner Codelco, where operations at major mines including El Teniente were temporarily halted. Executives at majors including Anglo American and BHP are also closely monitoring the situation and in touch with Chilean authorities. 

Copper is essential for the build-out of electricity grids, renewable energy and the data centres that will power AI. But experts are forecasting a widening shortage of the red metal in the decades to come, with supply shocks likely to become more common as climate change accelerates and fuels extreme weather events.

With copper stocks in the global network of London Metal Exchange warehouses already declining, “added supply risks like Chile are only upping the ante to copper price volatility”, said StoneX analyst Natalie Scott-Gray.

More broadly, mining investors “are increasingly trying to understand how physical [climate] risk translates into production disruption, cash flow, insurance costs and asset valuation”, said Giuseppe Amitrano, founder of risk analysis group WieldMore Investment Management. In a mining nation such as Chile, “even temporary disruption can matter for commodity markets”, he said.

Although miners typically bake some weather-related disruption into their forecasts, doing so accurately is likely to become more challenging as weather patterns change.

The disruption in Chile — where a state of emergency has been declared in certain regions — comes days after miners including BHP warned of declining copper production thanks in part to ageing mines that over time contain less of the red metal.

Accidents and interruptions at major mines last year helped propel the copper price to a series of record highs. Prices have continued to rise in recent weeks on fears that the US could impose new copper import tariffs and as Chinese buying has picked up.

Many mines are in areas at risk from extreme weather events, the frequency of which is increasing thanks to climate change. That could mean more operations being halted, with concerns also rising about the demand for water by the sector in countries that are at growing risk of drought.

“There is a risk that as more mines are built in countries that are already water-stressed, that increases the pressure on the system,” said Benchmark analyst Albert Mackenzie.

Older mines, where the concentration of metal in the ground may be lower, required more water to produce copper, he added. “The lower the ore grade is, the more water they use. So the older the deposit, the more water they’ll need.”

Industry body ICMM warned this week that a third of 12,000 metals and mining facilities globally were in areas experiencing “high competition for water” and at high risk of drought, and flagged Chile as a country of particular concern.

An analysis this month by Jefferies found that global copper production had fallen nearly 10 per cent in the latest quarter compared with the same period last year, based on updates from miners that represent about a fifth of global mined copper supply. That increased the risk of “sizeable deficits” in the market in the next 12 months, they said. 

The International Energy Agency also warned last week of “mounting difficulties” in miners being able to sustain copper production at current levels in countries including Chile and Peru.

London-based company shows that while the continent is industrialising, it still has manufacturing clout

Victoire! Tech laggard Europe scored a pair of wins last week. Britain’s Humanoid became Europe’s first pure-play robotics “unicorn”, achieving a post-money valuation of just under $1.4bn. And Mistral of France snagged chipmaker Samsung as a participant in its latest funding round, putting an expected €20bn sticker on the continent’s AI champion.

Granted, by global standards, Humanoid is a mere homunculus. In China, Unitree Robotics, expected to achieve a roughly $6bn valuation at its upcoming Shanghai listing, is one of a hundred Chinese companies focused on “embodied AI”. In the US, FigureAI commands a $39bn valuation; tech tsar Elon Musk says his Optimus humanoids will be “the biggest product ever created”.

But the London-based company offers a compelling roadmap for European tech, showing that while the continent is deindustrialising, it still has manufacturing clout. For example, Humanoid is tapping Bosch as a contract manufacturer, capitalising on the German group’s expertise in high-power, complex parts. That is doubly useful in an industry heavily reliant on safety certification.

Similar skill sets are available in the industry’s fledgling supply chain. Germany’s Schaeffler will supply the powerful high-precision actuators, the “muscles” which make up half of humanoids’ material costs and are vulnerable to bottlenecks. As humanoids are given more demanding tasks, called upon to lift heavier loads and keep going longer on fewer charges, actuators will need to keep pace.

These German partners are also investors and future customers. While reminiscent of the old Japanese keiretsu structure of interlinked commercial relationships and cross-shareholdings, this also borrows from the playbook of AI titans like OpenAI and Nvidia who invest in their buyers. In theory, that should pay off for both sides: keeping factories ticking and establishing supply chain resilience for Humanoid. The company aims to produce 150,000 units in 2030 and to generate revenue in the billions of dollars in the year prior.

Mistral, while the bigger company of the two, is on less convincing ground. The $6bn of funds it has raised, including in the current round, is much the same as Google burned through in a mere three months. Its business model of embedding engineers in clients’ businesses to deploy AI makes it a rather different beast from blockbuster model makers like Anthropic or China’s Moonshot AI.

Mistral’s key selling point is that Europe wants tech sovereignty and it has virtually no competition of similar size on home turf. That’s a way to get customers, particularly from the public sector, but hardly a recipe for global greatness. Humanoid, by contrast, is playing to Europe’s existing strengths — with a nod to Silicon Valley’s penchant for mutual industrial back-scratching. In this case, the stuff of science fiction looks like the more viable bet.

More than a dozen people were injured; police say suspect has ties to Islamic extremist groups

One person died and more than a dozen others were injured after a van rammed into a crowd during an LGBTQ pride parade in Berlin on Saturday.

Police identified the suspect as a man who has ties to Islamic extremist groups and is known to authorities in the German capital. Police didn’t release his name and said they were still searching for him.

Berlin police said the man drove a white van into Tiergarten park shortly before 10 p.m. and then crashed into a crowd. The parade was canceled, and attendees were told to go home.

About one million people attend the event, called the Christopher Street Day parade, to commemorate the 1969 gay uprising against police brutality at Stonewall Inn on New York City’s Christopher Street. The parade winds through Berlin and ends with performances in front of Brandenburg Gate, near the park where the incident occurred.

Police said that 16 people were hurt, several with life-threatening injuries, and that a motive was still being investigated.

Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner called the incident a brutal attack on the city and said his thoughts were with the victims.

The AI giant is continuing to use its balance sheet to help its biggest customers and partners buy and manufacture its AI servers.

Nvidia on Friday announced a $500 billion partnership with the conglomerate that owns SK Hynix, whose high-bandwidth memory chips are critical to Nvidia’s AI servers. The partnership aims to help Nvidia access more memory chips and fill more data centers with its servers.

Nvidia’s representatives didn’t elaborate on which firms would spend such a large amount or precisely what it would be for. Nvidia and the SK Hynix parent company said they would build two gigawatts of AI cloud capacity together, which could cost around $100 billion, based on today’s prices for data centers that consume such power. Their engineers also plan to work more closely together to develop new high-bandwidth memory products.

An Nvidia executive said the company’s biggest priority is to get its AI servers online as fast as possible, so it’s helping more customers find land, power, memory and raw materials to make AI data centers happen quickly.

“ What’s limiting the access to compute capacity is the fact that it’s very hard to find powered data centers, powered land,” said Raj Mirpuri, Nvidia’s vice president of global AI clouds and infrastructure, in a briefing with reporters. For instance, he said Nvidia helped Naver, the South Korean search firm, secure access to land and power to expand an AI data center from 55 megawatts to 200 MW by 2028. (Such a facility is relatively small compared to AI facilities underway in the U.S.)

Nvidia also plans to invest $1 billion in Naver and asset manager Brookfield has committed to fund the project with $9 billion. Naver is set to pay for the rest. The new data center is expected to start with Nvidia’s Grace Blackwell server racks and later add next-generation Vera Rubin racks.

Nvidia is increasingly using its balance sheet to help its customers afford more AI chips and help its cloud provider partners get financing to build new facilities for the chips.

The test flight marked several key milestones for SpaceX, including deploying 20 of its next generation Starlink satellites into orbit for the first time before they were intentionally deorbited.

SpaceX completed its 13th test flight of its Starship rocket on Friday night after aborting a test launch last week, the first completed launch since the company went public last month.

The test flight marked several key milestones for SpaceX, including deploying 20 of its next generation Starlink satellites into orbit for the first time before they were intentionally deorbited. The satellites are designed to be larger and more powerful than previous generations and the test allowed the company to see how the satellites would perform in flight for the first time.

SpaceX said in a statement that the Super Heavy booster separated from Starship as planned but made a “hard splashdown” in the Gulf after only some of its engines reignited during the landing burn. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said that the rocket’s next test might be even more advanced. “Unless we discover problems after mission data review, SpaceX will attempt to catch the ship with the tower on next flight,” he wrote on X.

Starship is central to SpaceX’s ambitions to dramatically expand its Starlink network and support future missions with NASA. Shares of the rocket company have been trending lower in recent weeks and is now well below the initial public offering price of $135 last week.

This front-and-center side effect might hit even harder than cramping, pain, and a bit of loose skin.

Blockbuster weight-loss drugs are being linked to a rare but upsetting side effect that’s showing up in the shower drain.

As the popularity of GLP-1 medications for type 2 diabetes and obesity continues to skyrocket, patients and doctors report a growing list of side effects. Some are common, such as vomiting, bloating, cramping, and loose skin, colloquially known as “Ozempic face.” Others are rare, including “Ozempic feet,” mood changes, and even scurvy.

Still, even with all the potential side effects, more people than ever are being prescribed semaglutide and tirzepatide. But new research on a rare yet devastating side effect may deter some prospective GLP-1 seekers: hair loss.

A study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that people taking GLP-1 medications such as Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro faced a higher risk of developing alopecia than patients taking two other classes of diabetes drugs.

The study, published Wednesday in The BMJ, a globally respected peer-reviewed British medical journal, followed patients for an average of 2.7 years and found that the increased risk was concentrated in non-scarring alopecia—a type of hair loss that does not permanently destroy the follicles.

After at least two years of treatment, GLP-1 users had a 37 percent higher chance of developing alopecia than patients taking SGLT-2 drugs and 68 percent higher odds than those taking DPP-4 drugs, both of which are also used to treat type 2 diabetes.

The actual risk, however, remained low.

Researchers recorded approximately three to nine cases of alopecia for every 1,000 patients each year. That translates to roughly seven GLP-1 users developing hair loss, compared with five SGLT-2 users and four DPP-4 users annually.

The findings may sound familiar to those who follow news about GLP-1s.

Comedian and influencer Claudia Oshry revealed in 2024 that her hair began “shedding” after she lost 70 pounds while taking Ozempic.

“It didn’t thin, but it started SHEDDING—which is literally worse,” the 31-year-old said during an Instagram Q&A. She added that it took six to nine months for her hair to “get back to normal.”

Buying Beverly Hills star Sophia Umansky, the 26-year-old daughter of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Kyle Richards, also documented “dramatic” hair loss after taking Mounjaro.

In an April 2025 TikTok, Umansky showed viewers the clumps of hair she had collected in her bathroom and joked that she would be “bald” within a week.

Umansky did not blame Mounjaro itself. She suspected that rapid weight loss and not consuming enough protein and vitamins had triggered the shedding.

Scientists are still trying to determine why some GLP-1 users lose hair.

According to the study’s researchers, rapid weight loss can disrupt the hair’s normal growth cycle and trigger telogen effluvium, a common and generally temporary form of shedding.

Changes in eating habits may also leave patients deficient in nutrients such as iron and zinc, which can further interfere with hair growth, according to the National Library of Medicine.

The medical records did not show how severe the patients’ hair loss was, how long it lasted, or whether their hair eventually grew back.

'Buying Beverly Hills' Star Reveals Rapid Hair Loss After GLP-1 Use

Other research suggests that weight loss alone may not fully explain the shedding.

A study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology compared more than 1 million GLP-1 users with patients taking metformin, a common diabetes drug that is not associated with the same dramatic weight loss.

The researchers found increased risk of several forms of alopecia among those taking GLP-1 medications.

Researchers emphasized that hair loss rarely causes physical harm but can still take an emotional toll, the degree of which is highly personal.

“Hair loss is a patient-valued outcome,” lead researcher Yong Chen wrote, adding that it can affect “self-esteem, quality of life, and adherence to treatment.”

For many, the benefits vastly outweigh the drawbacks, but researchers said the findings should help patients understand the potential trade-offs before starting—or deciding whether to continue—the highly popular medication.

SpaceX successfully deployed the first third-generation Starlink satellites on Friday using an upgraded version of its prototype Starship — the 13th test flight of its mega-rocket to date. But the company suffered another failure with its Super Heavy booster during a planned simulated landing in the Gulf of Mexico.

It’s the second time the company has had an issue with the Super Heavy booster on this V3 version of Starship. In May, on the first Starship V3 flight, SpaceX encountered a failure of the Starship’s Super Heavy booster as it separated from the upper stage of the rocket. SpaceX was able to perform a simulated landing of the upper stage of Starship during Friday’s launch after it deployed the Starlink satellites.

The launch came a little more than a week after SpaceX tried to conduct the 13th Starship launch. That attempt had to abort immediately after ignition due to a number of rocket engine failures. SpaceX said it replaced six engines ahead of Friday’s flight to fix the problem.

During Friday’s launch, the booster made it farther into its planned flight but wasn’t able to properly fire up all of the engines required for its simulated landing burn. The booster exploded after a faster-than-expected impact with the water.

This was the first launch of Starship since SpaceX went public in June in the largest IPO in history. In a test of SpaceX’s “fly, fail, fix” approach to Starship development, the company saw its stock decline last week in the day following the launch abort. The dip is part of a larger downward trend since the IPO that has seen the company’s stock drop from a peak of more than $200 per share to $115 at the close of trading on Friday. In after-hours trading, SpaceX shares fell another 2% following the booster failure, before paring some of those losses.

SpaceX had better luck with the Starship V3 upper stage during Friday’s launch. The upper stage lost a rocket engine during the first V3 launch in May. That didn’t happen this time around, as Starship encountered no issues on its way to deploying the new Starlinks. The Ship, as the company calls it, was able to survive the harsh forces of atmospheric reentry and perform a simulated landing in the Indian Ocean roughly one hour after liftoff.

Unlike previous Starship missions, the Ship didn’t explode when it tipped over into the water. The Ship instead floated around in the water, giving SpaceX a chance to use a drone to closely examine the heat shield tiles on its belly.

The new Starlink satellites burned up in the atmosphere roughly 20 minutes after deployment, as Starship still isn’t capable of reaching Earth orbit. SpaceX was able to communicate with all of them while they were in space, marking a step forward for that program, which is the only profitable part of the company’s business.

The ability to deploy the more capable V3 Starlink satellites improves the economics of the company’s capital-hungry space internet network. SpaceX has said launching 60 of the new satellites on Starship is a “potential twenty-fold increase” in downlink capacity deployed versus those flown by a single Falcon 9.

However, it’s not clear if SpaceX can realize those gains if Starship expends the Super Heavy booster rather than reusing it. SpaceX’s S-1 said that without a fully-reusable Starship, progress on Starlink “would be at a slower pace and higher cost.”