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Vaccination, infection with SARS-CoV-2 and a combination of both provide varying degrees of protection.

Three years into the pandemic, the immune systems of the vast majority of humans have learnt to recognize SARS-CoV-2 through vaccination, infection or, in many cases, both. But just how quickly do these types of immunity fade?

New evidence suggests that ‘hybrid’ immunity, the result of both vaccination and a bout of COVID-19, can provide partial protection against reinfection for at least eight months1. It also offers greater than 95% protection against severe disease or hospitalization for between six months and a year after an infection or vaccination, according to estimates from a meta-analysis2. Immunity acquired by booster vaccination alone seems to fade somewhat faster.

But the durability of immunity is much more complex than the numbers suggest. How long the immune system can fend off SARS-CoV-2 infection depends not only on how much immunity wanes over time but also on how well immune cells recognize their target. “And that has more to do with the virus and how much it mutates,” says Deepta Bhattacharya, an immunologist at the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson. If a new variant finds ways to escape the existing immune response, then even a recent infection might not guarantee protection.

Omicron has presented just such a scenario. In late 2021 and early 2022, the main Omicron subvariants that were causing infections were BA.1 and BA.2. By mid-2022, the BA.5 wave was gathering strength in some countries, raising the prospect that those who’d already had one round of Omicron could soon be exposed to another. Data are now providing a sense of the risk of reinfection over time.

In one study1, researchers looking at Portugal’s national database of infections studied vaccinated people who became infected during the BA.1/BA.2 wave. Analysis showed that 90 days after an infection, this population had high immune protection — their risk of becoming infected with BA.5 was just one-sixteenth that of people who had been vaccinated but never infected. After that, hybrid immunity against infection declined steeply for a few months and then stabilized, ultimately providing protection for eight months after infection, the duration of the study.

Another study3 looked at 338 vaccinated health-care workers in Sweden, some of whom had had a previous SARS-CoV-2 infection. The authors found that workers with hybrid immunity had some level of protection against infection with BA.1, BA.2 and BA.5 for at least eight months. Swabbing of these workers’ noses revealed high levels of ‘mucosal’ antibodies, which are thought to be a better shield against infection than antibodies that circulate in the blood.

A study4 in Qatar compared the infection risks of people who had never caught SARS-CoV-2 with those of people who’d had a previous infection with Omicron or an earlier variant. Both groups included vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals. The results show that more recent infections provide greater protection than older ones in all cases. But because the virus kept evolving, the authors couldn’t untangle whether those differences were because of waning immunity, the virus’s growing ability to evade the immune response or, more likely, a combination of the two.

Taken together, the studies suggest that hybrid immunity provides some protection against infection for at least seven or eight months, and probably longer. “That’s pretty good,” says Charlotte Thålin, an immunologist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and an author of the Swedish study.

Other data suggest that in people whose immunity arises only from vaccination, a booster dose provides relatively short-lived protection against infection. Researchers in Israel studied more than 10,000 health-care workers who had not previously been infected; all received either three or four doses of the vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech5. The authors found that the fourth dose’s efficacy against infection fell rapidly. In fact, after four months, the fourth dose was no better than three doses at preventing infection.

However, “we are talking just about what we call relatively mild disease”, says study co-author Gili Regev-Yochay, an epidemiologist at Sheba Medical Center Tel Hashomer in Ramat Gan, Israel. None of the people in the study developed severe COVID-19.

What about those who haven’t been vaccinated? Another study6 in Qatar suggests that if the virus doesn’t change, infection-based immunity against reinfection can last up to three years. But that immunity can fade faster if the virus mutates. The authors studied data from unvaccinated people who were infected with a pre-Omicron variant. Fifteen months later, those infections were less than 10% effective at protecting against Omicron infection. And it is much riskier to rely on immunity from infection than to get immunized.

But it’s nearly impossible to apply the study results to predict an individual’s risk of becoming infected in future. Immunity depends on a variety of factors, including genetics, age and sex. And past risk of infection isn’t necessarily a good predictor of the risk of future infection, because new variants are continually arising.

How growing global hybrid immunity will affect the timing and frequency of infection surges isn’t yet clear. Neither is it clear how this will influence health officials’ decisions about when to offer future booster doses.

For people who are at high risk of developing severe COVID-19, it might make sense to get boosters frequently. Younger individuals without any risk factors who live in regions where the virus has been circulating freely “may already have very significant protection that may not require as frequent boosters”, says Luís Graça, an immunologist in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Lisbon and a co-author of the Portuguese study. Another option might be to give a booster when antibody levels fall below a certain threshold, says Regev-Yochay.

Thålin understands how frustrating the caveats and uncertainty can be, but says that researchers aren’t likely to pin down an answer anytime soon. “The virus is evolving so fast,” she says. “What’s true today might not be true tomorrow.”

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-00124-y

This week, Ssense said it laid off 138 workers, and MatchesFashion received a $73 million cash injection from its shareholder. From more niche players to giants like Farfetch, the pressure remains high for luxury e-tailers.

Luxury brands mostly shook off the economic gloom of rampant inflation and collapsing consumer confidence last year — despite the deteriorating macroeconomic picture, sales grew an estimated 22 percent, according to Bain.

The picture hasn’t been as rosy for luxury’s multi-brand e-tailers, however: In August, Richemont took a €2.7 billion write-down on Yoox Net-a-Porter as it spun the e-tail group off into a joint venture at a far lower valuation than what it had paid.

And in December, Farfetch shares plummeted by a whopping 35 percent in a single day after the platform reported its first-ever year-on-year drop in sales on its marketplace. In a telling sign, multi-brand luxury e-commerce’s biggest player keeps shifting its focus to licensing activities and white-label services for brands.

“The Farfetch core [online marketplace] business is not a good business, despite Farfetch being the champion of the world at it,” analyst Luca Solca said in a note to clients.

This week, news suggested that smaller rivals — whose focus on tight product curation was meant to set them apart in the sector — are facing troubles, too.

Montreal-based fashion-forward retailer Ssense confirmed it had laid off 138 employees (roughly 7 percent of its headcount), citing “a shift in consumer online shopping back to pre-pandemic levels as well as the macro-economic environment.”

London-based MatchesFashion received a £60 million ($73 million) injection of capital from its owner Apax Partners, suggesting that even after losing £24 million last year the company still needs more support to fuel a hoped-for turnaround under CEO Nick Beighton (the company’s fourth chief executive in as many years).

Even Germany’s MyTheresa — which has staked its reputation on a more cautious approach, protecting profitability by balancing the costly process of acquiring new customers with efforts to identify and retain high-spenders — has struggled to maintain investor support. Even as rising interest rates and a cloudy economic outlook drove investors away from cash-burning businesses in favour of more prudent (read: profitable) companies, shares in the New York-listed e-tailer have fallen 65 percent since its January 2021 IPO (compared to a 9 percent increase in the S&P 500).

Simply put: it’s tough out there for luxury e-tailers at every size.

To be sure, internet companies well beyond luxury e-tailers are feeling the pinch after a period of cheap debt and rapid growth. In recent weeks, layoffs have hit tech giants Meta and Google as well as fashion start-ups including StitchFix and GymShark.

But long-standing challenges for luxury‘s digital retailers such as securing inventory from A-list brands, the high costs of maintaining logistics and technology platforms, and fierce price competition due to instantaneous comparison shopping show no signs of abating. And those challenges are harder to paper over in an economy where investment capital has become more scarce and borrowing has grown more expensive.

Meanwhile, the costs of generating traffic from sources like Instagram and Google has also gone up — thwarting client acquisition — at the same time as e-tailers are facing increased competition from the brands they sell, which have ramped up their own digital efforts considerably since the pandemic. Brands have also upgraded and expanded their physical retail networks, eroding online ordering’s appeal.

“On the one side, you need money to acquire the collections, then on the other you have to need money to get the traffic from Meta and Google — which costs a fortune. In most markets, this equation is impossible,” said Michel Campan, an e-commerce consultant who has worked for brands including Hermès and Christian Dior.

Pivoting to e-concessions — in which brands pay commissions for sales through virtual “shop-in-shops”, but hold stocks themselves — is one way e-tailers are evolving their approach to cope with cash shortages and competition from brands’ direct channels. While top-line revenues from commissions are lower for each sale, profitability can be higher as e-tailers dodge inventory risk.

The e-concession approach also allows e-tailers to focus their own investments on driving traffic and making their websites and apps more appealing for shoppers: in a world where nearly all brands sell directly online, multi-brand player’s ability to drive web traffic and engage consumers remains their main value-added, Campan said.

Taste can be hard to scale. But despite the challenges currently facing smaller online players, differentiating themselves through their unique fashion edit remains a key strategy, Solca says. “This can be a viable business, especially if driven with a goal to stand out on curation and fashion viewpoint.”

Further consolidation is likely following the Farfetch-YNAP tie-up last year. And yet, “this is not going to be a ‘winner takes all’ environment,” Solca said.

E-commerce sales are set to grow by double-digits annually between 2022 to 2025, according to BoF and McKinsey’s State of Fashion report. Multi-brand players still have a chance to secure their piece of that growing pie. But as e-tailers increasingly go head-to-head with trusted luxury brands, it’s unclear how big that slice will be.

The Groupe Arnault-backed private equity giant is looking at Jean Touitou's French denim brand.

PARIS — French American private equity giant L Catterton is in talks to acquire ready-to-wear brand A.P.C., sources confirmed to WWD.

The French denim stalwart founded by Jean Touitou in 1987 enlisted investment bank Rothschild & Co. to seek a buyer back in December.

A.P.C. has 80 corporate-owned stores and is present in 350 multibrand brand doors around the world. In 2021, the company’s turnover was 82 million euros. Based on those turnover numbers, the valuation would be in the $100 million to $150 million range.

The U.S.-headquartered L Catterton was formed in 2016 when consumer specialist Catterton joined forces with LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton chief executive officer Bernard Arnault’s Groupe Arnault. The resulting company bills itself as “the largest, diversified consumer-dedicated private equity firm in the world,” and has its fingers in several fashion pies.

The investment company made a strategic investment in Danish brand Ganni in 2017, which was reported to be on the block for $700 million in June 2022. At the time, the firm hired French bank Lazard to handle the sale process, which was said to attract interest from Chinese buyers. No deal has been announced.

It invested in French outerwear brand Jott in 2021, and in two years doubled the company’s turnover to 150 million euros. It took a majority stake in Italian brand Etro the same year, in a deal valued at 500 million euros.

L Catterton’s fashion investments have included ba&sh, Birkenstock, Charles & Keith, Everlane, Gant, Gentle Monster, Halston Apparel Group Inc., Pepe Jeans, Savage x Fenty, Sandro and Maje parent company SMCP, and more.

L Catterton offloaded its stake in French contemporary brand ba&sh to investment group HLD in March 2022. The investment group had invested in the company in 2015. During that time it embarked upon an aggressive global expansion strategy, adding 200 points of sale in six years.

The private equity giant enlisted Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to explore an initial public offering with a valuation of $3 billion to $4 billion in February 2022 but the IPO never materialized given the turmoil in global stock markets last year and into 2023.

Boeing’s iconic jumbo jet was prophesied as a “weapon of peace.” It leaves the world a smaller place. And still a war-torn one, too.

By James Ross Gardner

On July 15, 1966, Juan Trippe, the founder and C.E.O. of Pan American World Airways, addressed roughly twelve hundred people assembled in the banquet hall of a Seattle hotel. They had gathered to celebrate the Boeing company, founded fifty years earlier, on the shores of nearby Lake Union. Outside the opulent downtown hotel, the world had, seemingly overnight, turned into a more dangerous place. U.S. jet fighters in Vietnam had begun encountering Soviet-supplied mig-21s; in Europe, volunteers from Eastern Bloc countries were threatening to fly to Southeast Asia to engage Americans in combat.

The Vietnam War was heating up. The Cold War was decades from ending. But Trippe, who’d recently preordered twenty-five units of Boeing’s new jumbo jet, which still only existed on paper, spoke of a bright future: “The new era of mass travel between nations may well prove more significant to human destiny than the atom bomb. . . . The 747 will be a great new weapon of peace.”

So began the legend and mythmaking of what is arguably the planet’s most recognizable airplane. And, for the next half century, the 747, christened by its maker the “queen of the skies,” ruled the airways and won over the hearts and imaginations of travellers—a reign celebrated, earlier this week, when a similar crowd gathered at the Boeing assembly plant in Everett, Washington, to fête the jumbo jet as the company delivered the final 747 to its last buyer.

For the most part, the hype that started in the late nineteen-sixties was justified. There had never been anything like the 747: the first wide-body, multi-aisle passenger jet, the largest craft to nose up to any airport—from the ground to the top of the tail, as tall as a six-story building, and three-quarters of a football field in length—capable of carrying more than four hundred passengers. And it was one of the safest aircraft ever built, as a Boeing in-house historian has claimed.

There was nothing like the 747 aesthetically, either. Admirers spoke of it—still speak of it—with the reverence of a Galleria dell’Accademia docent regarding Michelangelo’s “David.” The swoop of the plane’s tapered body, the contour of its wide, gleaming nose, and, most glorious of all, its iconic hump.

The first 747 left the ground in early 1969. After touching back down, the Boeing test pilot expressed awe at how effortlessly it flew. “Let’s put it this way,” his voice cracked over the radio, “the airplane landed itself.” Passengers loved the plane so much that Trippe’s Pan Am eventually purchased dozens more. Other airlines followed, finding new ways to attract travellers. The plane’s distinct hump had come about to accommodate the flight deck—for aerodynamic reasons, it extended back far enough to create extra space, which some airlines used as a lounge or seating for élite customers, cast in ads in nineteen-seventies shag-carpet swank.

For all its glamour, though, the plane also helped to democratize air travel. Because the 747 could now seat more travellers on a single flight, airlines were able to sell more tickets at lower prices. Suddenly, travel, particularly intercontinental travel, was accessible to people who had rarely, if ever, been in the air. The 747, in a sense, taught the world to fly.

It also etched its image onto popular culture. In the visual grammar of film, a 747 touching down on a runway, heat waves warbling in the foreground, is shorthand for our character has left the country. The 747 is a—if not the—plot point in countless blockbuster movies, “Air Force One” and “Snakes on a Plane” among them.

Along the way, Boeing and its famous planes transformed Seattle. The atmosphere of innovation the company fostered in its home town since the early twentieth century—hiring engineers from all over the world, investing heavily in research and training in local schools and universities—helped turn the region into an international tech hub, one that paved the way for companies like Microsoft and Amazon. But it also chained the local economy’s fate to that of Boeing. By 1957, the company employed a hundred thousand people throughout the region. When Boeing did well, so did Seattle. When Boeing struggled, the city did as well.

In the early seventies, commercial-airplane sales at Boeing began to lag. The company laid off sixty thousand employees. The unemployment rate in the Seattle area rose to fifteen per cent. The event, known locally as the Boeing Bust, left downtown businesses shuttered as people moved away in droves. Locals were angered when two copywriters put too fine a point on it, erecting a billboard that read “Will the last person leaving SEATTLE — Turn out the lights.”

The city later bounced back, and so did the 747. Boeing released several new versions over the decades. But the twenty-first century was less kind to the jumbo jet than the twentieth. For one, technology had advanced to the degree that planes could confidently cross continents and oceans with just two engines rather than the 747’s four. Those new engines also used less fuel—appealing to airlines and travellers increasingly wary of a heating planet. In 2020, Boeing announced that it would be building its last 747 in 2022.

Though a few airlines—including Lufthansa and Korean Air—still fly passengers via 747s, and likely will for decades to come, most in use today are cargo planes. “If you’re flying [a Boeing plane] abroad, it’s going to be either 777 or 787, which have the range of 747 with only two engines and smaller size,” the aerospace analyst Richard Aboulafia told me. He’s followed the volatile course of Boeing since 1988 and is a frequent critic of the company, most prominently for its handling of the deadly 737 max crashes in 2018 and 2019. But Aboulafia remains awed by the 747, he said. “It’s one of the great wonders of the twentieth century.”

Earlier this week, thousands gathered at the Boeing assembly plant in Everett, about thirty miles outside Seattle, to honor that great wonder. The event was—not a wake, exactly, but something like a celebration of life.

John Travolta stood onstage inside what is presumed to be the world’s most capacious building. Head shaved, beard impeccably trimmed, the actor, seventies icon, and longtime aviator wore a gray suit jacket over a black sweater and white collared shirt. “How many in the audience have actually flown on a 747?” he asked. The executives, engineers, and mechanics, seated upon nine columns of chairs stretched across the assembly floor, raised their hands.“Yeehaw! Yes!” Travolta shouted back, before singing a line from the Earth, Wind & Fire 1981 hit “Let’s Groove”—the part that goes, “like a seven-forty-seven.”

He gushed about the iconic jumbo jet, which, years ago, he’d been certified to fly as part of a promotional deal he had with Qantas Airways. Travolta was one of several speakers Boeing brought onstage to extoll the plane, including corporate leaders at some of its customers: Lufthansa, UPS, and the final 747 customer, Atlas Air, a cargo-and-charter company that was flying the plane—parked right outside—to Cincinnati the next morning.

Despite a few nods to the future by the Boeing C.E.O. Dave Calhoun, the cameo by Travolta, a star of the No. 1 box-office draw of 1978, captured the afternoon’s vibe the best. The event was heavy on history and nostalgia, as if Juan Trippe’s words about international harmony could still be mistaken for prophecy. Nearly sixty years after the C.E.O. of the now defunct Pan Am predicted that the 747 would be a “weapon of peace,” the world is very much gripped by nationalism, and the threat of nuclear conflict is rising. (It was another Boeing-designed plane, the B-29, that dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the first and only use of nuclear weapons against a population.)

Trippe was right, though, about one thing. The 747 made the world smaller, encouraging and making it possible for more people to travel. And, in that way, it changed us fundamentally—as citizens of the planet and maybe even as a species. Nearly a hundred and twenty years after the Wright brothers first untethered themselves from the earth, and half a century after Boeing’s jumbo jet took us all up there with them, we are different. We soar through the skies at six hundred miles per hour, six and a half miles up, and hardly blink. We jump across whole continents, across entire oceans, in these soft, human bodies, with little more protecting us than a thin sheet of aluminum alloy, and we barely give it a second’s thought. We should go woozy at the vertiginous improbability. We should be unmoored by existential dread. Instead, we loosen the seat-belt buckle. We convince ourselves of brighter futures.

It seems like every week we are going to be talking about AI. This week did not have a $10 billion round go to an AI startup, but $300 million is still pretty big. It’ll be interesting to see if these large corporate rounds to AI startups continue all year, or if this is just the latest shiny new object for investors.

1. (tied) Anthropic, $300M, AI: San Francisco-based startup, and rival to ChatGPT, Anthropic is the latest AI company to raise big from a tech giant. The AI startup locked up a $300 million round from Google this week. Anthropic’s new round could bring the company’s total valuation to $5 billion, The New York Times reported. The Financial Times first reported Google as the investor. The new year is shaping up to be an all-out AI war. Late last month, Microsoft finally confirmed it has agreed to a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment” into OpenAI, the startup behind the artificial intelligence tools ChatGPT and DALL-E, for a reported $10 billion.

1. (tied) Our Next Energy, $300M, energy: While the EV market has taken off, it’s important to remember those vehicles need batteries. Novi, Michigan-based Our Next Energy raised a huge $300 million Series B to develop those batteries. The round values the startup at $1.2 billion and was led by Franklin Templeton Investments and real estate-focused Fifth Wall. The raise comes just as supply chain issues and the rising cost of battery and metal material are bottlenecking U.S.-based electric car manufacturers. The latest raise will help fund the operations of its battery cell factory that completed construction in December and will formally launch in 2024. Our Next Energy has now raised $390 million, according to Crunchbase data.

3. Colossal Biosciences, $150M, biotech: The idea of bringing back the dodo also was able to bring in big money. De-extinction platform Colossal Biosciences raised a $150 million Series B, giving the startup a valuation of more than $1 billion, per reports. The new round was led by US Innovative Technology Fund. The Dallas-based startup, which launched in 2021, plans to use the new cash infusion to continue to advance its genetic engineering, as well as keep developing its software and hardware solutions for applications involved with de-extinction, conservation and human health care. With this new round, Colossal has launched its Avian Genomics Group, which will pursue the de-extinction of the dodo. The startup previously had talked about bringing back the woolly mammoth and the Tasmanian tiger. Last March, Colossal Bioscience raised a $60 million Series A led by Thomas Tull and At One Ventures. Per the company, it has now raised a total of $225 million.

4. LeafLink, $100M, cannabis: Few cannabis startups raise the kinds of rounds to get high on this list, but LeafLink’s $100 million round makes it. The round was led by CPMG, L2 Ventures and Nosara Capital. The New York-based cannabis wholesaler also announced co-founder Ryan Smith will move to the chairman post, while company president Artie Minson will take over as CEO. Some form of marijuana use is legal in 40 states in the U.S. The company says its marketplace processes approximately $5 billion in annual transactions — which represents about 50% of legal U.S. wholesale cannabis commerce. Founded in 2015, LeafLink has raised $231 million in financing, per the company.

5. (tied) Clearsense, $50M, health care: Data governance and transparency aren’t the sexiest aspects of the tech world, but they are necessary — especially in highly regulated industries such as health care. Jacksonville, Florida-based health care data analytics startup Clearsense raised a $50 million Series D funding round led by HealthQuest Capital to tap further into that market. The company offers a platform of data applications that aim to drive faster clinical, financial and operational outcomes. Founded in 2013, the startup has raised more than $100 million, according to Crunchbase.

5. (tied) Jokr, $50M, delivery: Instant grocery delivery company Jokr raised a $50 million Series C led by G Squared on a $1.3 billion post-money valuation, according to TechCrunch. The New York-based company last raised a $260 million round in November 2021 at a $1.2 billion pre-money valuation. The startup is looking to increase its presence in Brazil. Founded in 2021, the company has raised $480 million, according to Crunchbase.

5. (tied) Portside, $50M, aviation: Air travel has some issues implementing new tech and software — something that became abundantly clear this holiday season as delays and cancellations ruined many people’s travel plans. Well, San Francisco-based software developer Portside is looking to fix that, at least for the business aviation industry. The startup raised a $50 million Series B this week led by Insight Partners. Its software allows aircraft operators to share schedules, maintenance data and other important data to help streamline a process with many moving parts. Founded in 2017, the startup has raised more than $67 million, per Crunchbase.

8. (tied) Freeform, $45M, 3D printing: Los Angeles-based 3D printing company Freeform emerged from stealth this week and announced it has raised $45 million to date from investors including Two Sigma Ventures, Founders Fund and Threshold Ventures.

8. (tied) Moov, $45M, financial services: Denver-based financial tools developer Moov closed a $45 million Series B led by Commerce Ventures. Founded in 2017, the company has raised nearly $78 million.

10. Phantom AI, $37M, autonomous vehicles: Mountain View, California-based autonomous driving platform developer Phantom AI locked up a $36.5 million Series C from investors that included Renaissance Asset Management and Samsung Ventures among others. Founded in 2017, Phantom AI has raised $80.2 million, per the company.

The largest round this week happened outside the U.S.

Beijing’s exports of video recorders to Iran more than doubled in 2022 as protests swept the country

The U.S. is considering new sanctions on Chinese surveillance companies over sales to Iran’s security forces, officials familiar with the deliberations said, as Iranian authorities increasingly rely on the technology to crack down on protests.

U.S. authorities are in advanced discussions on the sanctions, according to the officials, and have zeroed in on Tiandy Technologies Co., a surveillance-equipment maker based in the eastern Chinese city of Tianjin whose products have been sold to units of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a hard-line paramilitary group.

Chinese customs data shows exports of video-recording equipment to Iran jumped last year amid mass protests sparked by the September death of a young woman while in police custody for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code. Human-rights groups say Iranian police have started using advanced surveillance technology in combination with plainclothes police to counter the protests as demonstrators have grown more nimble in their displays of defiance.

On state television, the police in Tehran showcased the use of networked surveillance cameras to identify, follow and arrest demonstrators. Iran’s security forces are now planning to use Chinese technologies to detect and punish women who don’t wear the veil, according to an Iranian official and an adviser to the IRGC.

The expanding role of Chinese technology companies in helping Iran clamp down on dissent has drawn mounting scrutiny from Washington, where officials have grown alarmed by Beijing’s exports of surveillance tools used in a forced assimilation campaign targeting the Uyghur minority in China’s northwestern region.

Sanctions against Tiandy are being considered by both the State Department and the Treasury, said the officials. If implemented, the move could put the company at risk of being cut off from the American financial system and cripple its ability to conduct business in U.S. dollars.

The State Department declined to comment on the possibility of sanctions against Chinese surveillance companies. The department “will not hesitate to hold persons and entities accountable for supporting human rights violations by [China] and Iran with every tool in our toolbox,” it said in an emailed statement.

The Treasury declined to comment. Tiandy didn’t respond to requests for comment. A spokesman for Iran’s delegation to the United Nations didn’t return a request for comment.

Tiandy’s surveillance platform—which combines closed-circuit television cameras with facial recognition and other cutting-edge analytical capabilities—has been sold to units of the IRGC and the Basij, another paramilitary group, in towns just outside Tehran, according to the company’s Iranian distributor. Both groups have played a key role in cracking down on street protests.

U.S. surveillance industry research firm IPVM first reported Tiandy’s commercial dealings with Iran at the end of 2021. Iran’s government hasn’t openly acknowledged the purchase of Chinese surveillance equipment, though Iranian lawmakers have said that surveillance cameras installed to monitor traffic would be repurposed to enforce the country’s dress code.

China is home to the world’s largest and most advanced video-surveillance industry, and Beijing has aggressively marketed the country’s digital tracking systems to other governments as a ready-made solution to security issues such as violent crime and terrorism.

Evidence is thin that such systems are effective in tackling crime, even if governments often use that as a pretext for installing surveillance equipment, said Steven Feldstein, a senior fellow at the Washington-based think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of the book “The Rise of Digital Repression.”

“It is far easier to justify purchasing surveillance systems to maintain public order than to admit to acquiring them for political repression,” he said.

According to its website, privately held Tiandy, founded in 1994, has sold its cameras and other surveillance products to more than 60 countries and regions around the world, including South Korea, Turkey, the Netherlands and the U.K.

The U.S. Commerce Department put Tiandy on an export blacklist in December, citing sales to Iran’s IRGC and the company’s links to China’s campaign against Uyghurs minorities in the Xinjiang region. The decision barred U.S. companies from exporting components to Tiandy without a license.

A Tiandy subsidiary in Xinjiang says on its website that it provides video surveillance systems in the region in service of “safety and stability maintenance.” The website also shows that Tiandy sold a surveillance system to Tibetan authorities in 2020.

The U.S. is also looking at whether Zhejiang Uniview Technologies Co., another large Chinese provider based in the eastern Chinese tech hub of Hangzhou, has sold surveillance tools to Iran security forces.

In October, Uniview operated a booth and sent a Chinese product manager to a security trade fair organized by the Iranian police, according to photo agency images of the event posted online. Representatives of the company had previously met the head of state security in Khorasan, a province that was the scene of widespread protests in northeastern Iran, according to the Instagram account of Uniview’s Iranian distributor, which didn’t return a request for comment.

Uniview didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Exports to Iran listed under one customs category commonly used for Chinese surveillance systems—“other video recording and reproduction equipment”—more than doubled in 2022 from the year prior to 89.2 million yuan, or $13.3 million, official Chinese customs data shows.

Chinese surveillance companies export their products under a variety of different customs codes, making comprehensive data on shipments to Iran difficult to tabulate.

The sanctions deliberations, which have gained momentum in recent weeks, are taking place against a backdrop of rising tensions between China and the U.S. On Friday, the State Department said it had indefinitely postponed a trip by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing after U.S. officials said they had detected a Chinese balloon gathering intelligence over the continental U.S.

The officials said there were also concerns that sanctions could affect the U.S.’s security-conscious allies in the Middle East. Tiandy’s systems have been installed in buildings in the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Iraq, among others.

Iran’s interest in Chinese surveillance systems extends beyond Tiandy and Uniview. Prison authorities in Ilam, a Kurdish-populated province in western Iran where several local people have died protesting in recent weeks, have also sought surveillance equipment from Hangzhou-based Hikvision Digital Technology Co., according to documents posted on an Iranian government-procurement website.

A spokesman for Hikvision, the world’s largest surveillance-camera maker, said the company exited the Iranian market years ago and doesn’t sell its products in the country. The company won’t resume sales or authorize any entities to sell in Iran so long as U.S. or other Western sanctions remain in effect, he said.

The investment bank should consider buying a commercial bank such as Bank of New York Mellon

Goldman Sachs has lost its swagger. The market value of the venerable 154-year-old investment bank, at $121bn, is now $42bn less than its longtime arch-rival Morgan Stanley. It used to be that Goldman was the more valuable bank for many years.

Likewise, it used to be that the pay of Goldman’s chief executive was the gold standard on Wall Street. But in 2022, Morgan Stanley’s chief executive, James Gorman, was paid $31.5mn for his work, down 10 per cent from the year before, while Goldman’s CEO, David Solomon, received $25mn, down 29 per cent.

Then there are reports of a morale problem at the firm, which I guess is to be expected in the wake of Solomon’s recent decision to fire 3,200 employees, roughly 6 per cent of its global workforce of nearly 49,000, and of his recent confession that the bank’s strategic focus on the Main Street consumer and other more mundane commercial banking products has pretty much flopped.

Here, then, is some unsolicited advice for Solomon and the bank’s august board of directors on how it can get its game back. First and foremost, Goldman needs to bulk up its balance sheet, to better compete with its Wall Street rivals, such as JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and of course Morgan Stanley. The latter has pulled ahead largely because of its decision to focus on the more stable profitability of wealth management rather than on the more volatile investment banking business that remains Goldman’s bread and butter.

Goldman needs access to the cheap capital that banking deposits provide to keep its lending machine humming. In short, it needs to buy a big commercial bank but not one that also has an investment bank, or investment-banking aspirations. The perfect merger candidate for Goldman has long been Bank of New York Mellon, which operates in 35 countries around the world and has $1.8tn of assets under management and another whopping $44.3tn of assets under custody or administration.

It also owns Pershing, one of the leading clearing houses on Wall Street, and — perhaps best of all — the company is a complementary fit with Goldman. There is no overlap with Goldman’s world-class investment banking and principal investment businesses. What’s more, Bank of New York Mellon’s relatively new chief executive, Robin Vince, spent 26 years in a variety of jobs at Goldman Sachs before moving last August. He knows Goldman and vice versa.

There are obstacles, of course. Goldman has an unrivalled record advising others on strategic deals but a lousy record making acquisitions on its own account, which is another factor that separates Goldman from its rivals.

No one much remembers Goldman’s $6.5bn acquisition in 2000 of Spear Leeds & Kellogg, the market maker, which ended poorly. It has made plenty of other smaller acquisitions over the years but none has been particularly memorable or game-changing (with the notable exception of J Aron & Company, the commodities trader. But that was back in 1981).

With a market value of more than $40bn, buying Bank of New York Mellon would be a transformational deal for Goldman and one, I believe, that would allow Goldman to keep intact its unique and insular culture while also allowing it to get bigger in asset management, deposits and the back-office mechanics of Wall Street. BNY Mellon would be a good counterpoint to Goldman’s perennial strengths of investment banking and trading — a business that seems less volatile at the bank than at other places. Goldman is simply better at it than its competitors.

But there is also the no small matter of whether Goldman’s prudential regulator, the US Federal Reserve, would permit Goldman to make such a large, horizontal acquisition. The Fed has not approved any such deals on Wall Street since the days before the 2008 financial crisis (and those were forced, of course). But it’s high time for the Fed to allow much-needed consolidation in the still-bloated banking sector to continue.

Then there is the issue of employee morale. It’s a problem across Wall Street but Goldman being Goldman, its problems tend to be magnified and showcased. And, to be frank, Solomon has become part of the problem. Time for him to ditch the two Gulfstream private jets bought in 2019 under his direction; put the extracurricular DJ-ing gig on hold until the tension inside the bank subsides; and, for goodness sake, reinstate the free coffee, tea and snacks. We all know how hard everyone at Goldman is going to have to work to make the turnround a success. There might as well be a few moments of enjoyment along the way.

There’s a reason Bernard Arnault is the world’s richest person. The chairman, CEO, and controlling shareholder of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton LVMUY +1.26% , the world’s largest luxury-goods merchant, knows how to buy companies and integrate them. He’s a shrewd negotiator, too.

On LVMH’s recent earnings call, Arnault crowed over his company’s 2021 purchase of Tiffany, saying that Tiffany’s earnings had doubled since the deal. Tiffany, for the first time, will have more than one billion euros [$1.08 billion] in profits, he said, adding: “We were barely at half that when we acquired the business. Everyone said to me, ‘Why are you buying this business at that price; it’s far too much.’ But, I mean, it wasn’t perhaps managed in the most dynamic way. I won’t dwell on that….but if it were listed today, [it would] probably [be] worth twice as much.”

The deal was contentious. LVMH agreed to pay more than $16 billion for the U.S. jewelry retailer in late 2019, then tried to back out in September 2020 after the pandemic hit Tiffany’s sales and revenue. The companies then recut the deal. LVMH ultimately paid $131.50 a share for Tiffany, below the initial $135, or about 30 times Tiffany’s 2019 net income of $550 million. The current multiple is roughly 15 times, based on Arnault’s statement that earnings have doubled.

LVMH has excelled at acquisitions, including buying cosmetic retailer Sephora in 1997 for little more than $200 million and luxury jeweler Bulgari for $5 billion in 2011. Arnault, 73, is now worth $190 billion, according to Bloomberg’s tally, beating out No. 2-ranked Elon Musk, with $170 billion.

As the recovery in international travel continues, and demand in the U.K. stays strong and pricing remains robust, it might be worth checking into the U.K. hotel group Whitbread .

The stock (ticker: WTB.UK) has had a stellar start to the year, climbing 20%—in comparison to the broader FTSE 100’s 4% rise. But it might not be too late for investors to book the hotel and restaurant group because there are potential catalysts for more gains.

Whitbread’s budget Premier Inn chain is showing no signs of a slowdown, with strong sales in the third quarter and an upbeat outlook. It is also poised to gain market share as U.K. hotel supply declines, a trend which the company says will keep pricing strong.

Investors may also be in line for more capital returns, with management set to update shareholders about its full-year results in April.

On the company’s third-quarter sales call in January, Chief Financial Officer Hemant Patel emphasized the company’s “good history” on shareholder returns before the Covid-19 pandemic. He reminded analysts that Whitbread returned 2.5 billion pounds sterling ($3.1 billion) to investors following the sale of Costa Coffee to Coca-Cola in 2019.

Over the longer term, Whitbread’s real growth story may lie in Germany, where it is rapidly expanding the Premier Inn brand. German sales rose 26% in the third quarter from the same period in 2019, on a like-for-like basis.

Premier Inn Germany remains loss-making, but turning a profit isn’t far off. Whitbread recently narrowed expected losses for its German business, to £40 million to £50 million in the full year 2023, ending March 1. The growth is only just getting going. Whitbread opened three hotels in Germany in the third quarter, taking its total to 45, and it has another 36 in the pipeline.

J.P. Morgan analyst Estelle Weingrod says Whitbread’s German business is currently being “overlooked” by investors and could account for more than 10% of group revenue in two to three years. She has a Buy rating on the stock, with a target price of £42, a 33% gain from Thursday’s price.

Whitbread’s core U.K. market provides another reason for optimism. A trading update last month showed U.K. sales growing 27% on a like-for-like basis, compared with the third quarter of 2019. Significantly, management said bookings were encouraging and expected pricing to remain strong, allaying any fears of a demand slowdown.

“Whitbread is, by far, the leader in the U.K. in its segments and should continue to benefit from both a solid market and the fact that supply is structurally positive,” with stand-alone hotels closing and chains gaining market share, Deutsche Bank analyst Andre Juillard says. He has a Buy rating on the stock with a £35.50 target price.

U.K. hotel room supply is down 4% versus prepandemic, the company estimated, as the number of independent hotels has fallen during tough economic times. Management forecasts that labor shortages and cost inflation may accelerate the decline further.

Whitbread’s own rise in costs doesn’t look too bad, with the company seeing a 7% to 8% increase in the full year 2024. Barclays analysts, also rating the stock a Buy, say Whitbread would need 3% to 4% like-for-like sales growth in the U.K. to mitigate that, which it sees as achievable.

The stock is still relatively cheap, despite its strong start to the year. The shares trade at 21.2 times full-year 2024 earnings estimates, cheaper than the sector average of 25.9.

The budget-hotel leader could be a stock well placed to weather a potential recession and come out the other side as an even stronger player in the industry.

The Tesla founder's ownership of Twitter could pose risks for him, just as Ford's ownership of a newspaper created controversy.

The historical parallels between Elon Musk and Henry Ford—two visionary car moguls who became the wealthiest and most famous men in the land—were many, even before Musk bought Twitter.

But by venturing into the wild world of social media, the Tesla CEO may be replaying aspects of one of the most troubling, and unsuccessful, episodes in Ford’s career.

In 1918, the year Ford turned 55, at the height of his fame and power, he bought a local newspaper, the Dearborn Independent in Michigan.

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Turning it into a national megaphone for unfounded conspiracy theories revolving around a group of Jewish capitalists who supposedly ran the world, the Independent drew swift condemnations and huge circulation gains. (Ford dealers were forced to guarantee a certain number of subscriptions of the newspaper.)

Ford put a lot of energy into the money-losing paper, consulting daily on content such as its series “The International Jew: The World’s Problem,” according to biographer Steven Watts. Facing legal threats and a boycott of his car company, however, he finally shuttered the Dearborn Independent in 1927.

Of interest to Tesla investors is what happened to Ford Motor during these years: It tanked.

Ford went from being the country’s dominant car maker—in 1919, it outsold the next seven brands combined—to being an also-ran behind General Motors. While the founder’s attention was occupied, the competition passed it by.

Could something similar happen to Tesla, today’s dominant electric-vehicle maker, with its 51-year-old CEO focused elsewhere?

To be clear, there’s no evidence that Musk holds anti-Semitic or racist beliefs. Instead, Twitter is being accused by civil liberties groups and media watchdogs of not adequately policing those who voice such beliefs. Since Musk’s purchase, the social-media site has seen a sharp rise in hate speech, according to the Network Contagion Research Institute of Rutgers University, which works to identify and forecast cybersocial threats.

Musk, Tesla, and Twitter didn’t answer requests for comment. After making his offer to buy Twitter last spring, Musk said he wants to turn it into a de facto town square, “a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive.”

In December, after he had bought Twitter, Musk tweeted, “Hate speech impressions (# of times tweet was viewed) continue to decline, despite significant user growth.”

Musk and his brands have taken a reputational hit since the Twitter purchase, according to polls by U.S.-based Morning Consult and YouGov of the U.K. Musk, too, has taken a financial hit, being supplanted as the world’s wealthiest individual.

Dan Ives is one Tesla bull who blames the “debacle” in Tesla stock—its share price tumbled 65% last year—on Musk’s Twitter purchase. The managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities cut his price target on Tesla in December to $175 from $250. He recently raised it to $200. Tesla shares were recently trading at $173, up 40% this year.

“It is crucial for Musk to name a CEO for Twitter and return his focus to Tesla and SpaceX, which are the crown jewels,” Ives says. “Tesla is still way out front of the other electric-vehicle makers. But it’s got a bull’s-eye on its back, and every rival is taking aim at it.”

Ford wore the bull’s-eye in 1919, and had since the first Model T rolled out of the factory 11 years earlier.

Ford didn’t invent the assembly line. But he was the first to harness its power on a mass scale, allowing him to produce cars faster and cheaper than the competition. The Model T was the result, and it was an immediate hit.

Debuting in 1908, the ungainly “Tin Lizzie” cost $850 (around $25,000 in today’s dollars). As Ford increased efficiency, the price actually declined, to $360 in 1916, when Buicks and Studebakers sold for $600 to $1,000,

In 1919, Ford produced 820,445 Model T’s. Second-place GM’s brands, led by Chevrolet at 129,118, totaled about half that number.

In a Sept. 25, 1922, article headlined “The Richest Man,” Barron’s calculated that Ford made $100 profit on each of the approximately 1.1 million Model T’s sold, and that the company—closely held by Ford—“could be capitalized at $2,000,000,000 and pay 5% on that capital.”

“His income,” Barron’s declared, “is probably unequaled in all history.”

Not just fabulously wealthy, Ford was a celebrity—the living embodiment of America’s emerging consumer lifestyle.

“Ford became a colossus in the American consciousness,” Watts writes in The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century. “He seemed to represent everything that was modern, innovative, and vital in this triumphant new society.”

The press followed Ford’s every move, a carload of reporters tagging along on his yearly camping trips with Thomas Edison. His interviews were top sellers—when he could be tracked down.

“About the hardest man in the country to reach is Henry Ford,” Barron’s bemoaned in a May 21, 1923, article. “No man is more inaccessible.”

But while Ford was enjoying his celebrity status, bolstered by a powerful public-relations machine—his ghostwritten 1922 autobiography was a best-seller—rival car makers were catching up.

In 1925, Barron’s reported, GM for the first time matched Ford’s earnings, on lower sales volume. This was thanks to its line of cars “distributed in all price classes.”

Under now-legendary President Alfred P. Sloan, GM was developing the modern corporation, complete with management training and a focus on research and long-term planning.

In 1927, the Dearborn Independent’s last year, Ford finally replaced the Tin Lizzie with the Model A, but it was too late. As Ford shut production down for months of retooling, Chevy rose to the No. 1 spot for the first time. GM would soon pull away and never look back.

How much time did Ford give to the newspaper in lieu of Ford Motor? Biographer Watts writes that he visited the paper’s offices nearly every day—they were housed in Ford’s huge River Rouge industrial complex—dictating content to editor William Cameron.

“Ford would talk, sometimes with his feet propped on Cameron’s desk, expounding his philosophy while the ghostwriter took notes,” Watts writes. Some of this went on “Mr. Ford’s Own Page,” a full sheet of his musings.

And although it’s impossible to gauge its effect on car sales, the Independent’s controversial subject matter drew condemnations from former U.S. presidents and Roman Catholic cardinals, and editorial rebukes from publications including The Wall Street Journal and the Minneapolis Star.

Facing a costly libel suit, and an Anti-Defamation League–sponsored boycott, Ford pulled the plug. His halfhearted apology issued upon the paper’s closing drew the attention of humorist Will Rogers.

“He used to have it in for the Jewish people,” Rogers quipped, “until he saw them in Chevrolets.”

The YouGov poll found that Tesla’s reputation had sunk the most among Democrats and liberals, while rising somewhat among Republicans and conservatives. Morning Consult reported a similar political divide.

At least for now, Tesla remains the dominant EV maker, capturing 65% of the market in 2022 (Ford, at 7.6%, was No. 2). And, as Al Root of Barron’s points out, Tesla is the most cost-efficient producer, meaning it can undercut rivals, as Ford did a century ago.

Yet that wasn’t enough to keep Ford on top. Despite the many advantages it possessed in 1919, the year Ford started publishing the Independent, it was all unraveling by the time he shut it in 1927.

Ford stuck with one-man company leadership too long. He stuck with the Model T too long. And he made a major miscalculation with the newspaper.

“When combined with the crisis in the Ford Motor Company regarding the decline of the Model T,” Watts writes, “the debacle of the Dearborn Independent revealed a man who had passed his peak.”

Today, Ives of Wedbush Securities says, “Elon Musk is the Henry Ford of the 21st century, and Tesla is the most important car company since Ford and the Model T.”

Tesla, which reiterated its long-term plan for growth of 50% a year, on average, can only hope it doesn’t follow the Model T’s final trajectory.