WWD : Louis Vuitton Will Take Your Order in Saint-Tropez This Summer

Louis Vuitton Will Take Your Order in Saint-Tropez This Summer
Mory Sacko at Louis Vuitton seats 40 and boasts a vegetable-heavy menu.

A rendering of the Mory Sacko at Louis Vuitton restaurant.

BON APPETIT: Louis Vuitton, long synonymous with its famous monogram, may soon be thought of for mouthwatering meals, too.
Venturing further into the hospitality business, the French luxury giant is opening a summer restaurant in Saint-Tropez at the White 1921 Hotel on the Place des Lices, WWD has learned.
The 40-seat outdoor restaurant, slated to open June 17 for the summer, is not attached to a Louis Vuitton store, although there is one close by.
The eatery is called Mory Sacko at Louis Vuitton, named after the up-and-coming chef at the MoSuke restaurant in Paris, which boasts one Michelin star.
According to Vuitton, the vegetable-heavy menu will feature “globe-trotting recipes where African and Japanese influences meet the know-how of French cuisine.” For lunch, Sacko plans to offer gourmet versions of the Japanese lunch box known as “ekiben,” here featuring glass containers on a bespoke wooden tray.


Sacko also contributed to the decor, which boasts ship-deck wooden flooring, rattan chairs and hanging lamps, plus a verdant wall studded with sculpted monogram emblems.
The French luxury giant opened its first Vuitton café and restaurant in 2020 at its flagship boutique in Osaka, Japan, and followed up last year with an LV Café and chocolate shop at its new seven-story Ginza Namiki flagship in Tokyo.
In addition, last month the brand debuted a pop-up restaurant at its flagship in Seoul’s Gangnam district, that Louis Vuitton Café will be overseen by Korean-born French chef Pierre Sang Boyer, who runs several restaurants in Paris.
Michael Burke, chairman and chief executive officer of Vuitton, has hinted that eateries and even hotels could be a future expansion avenue for the megabrand.

WWD : Louis Vuitton Marks 10 Years of Objets Nomades

Louis Vuitton Marks 10 Years of Objets Nomades
Louis Vuitton's Objets Nomades furniture and design collection celebrates 10th anniversary at Milan Design Week.

The Belt Lounge Chair and Side Stool designed by Atelier Oï for Louis Vuitton's Objets Nomades collection.


MILAN — Louis Vuitton’s Objets Nomades are marking a milestone this year and the French luxury brand is celebrating accordingly during Milan Design Week
Vuitton is taking over Garage Traversi, a recently revamped former parking lot at the corner of Via Bagutta and Piazza San Babila in the Golden Triangle shopping district to celebrate the collection’s 10th anniversary.
Two floors of the 60,000-square-foot space, an original example of Rationalist architecture designed by Giuseppe De Min in 1939, will be bedecked in colorful isles to showcase the latest additions to the ever-expanding lineup of furniture and design objects.
Over the past decade 14 designers have lent their design bent to over 60 products exalting the house’s know-how and heritage rooted in travel-inclined products. The who’s who of international design who have teamed with Vuitton everyone from Patricia Urquiola, India Mahdavi and Atelier Biagetti to Zanellato/ Bortotto, Andrew Kudless, Tokujin Yoshioka, Frank Chou, Nendo, Damien Langlois- Meurinne, Barber & Osgerby, and Marcel Wanders Studio.

Milan’s Garage Traversi was taken over by Louis Vuitton for the 10th anniversary of its Objets Nomades collection.
STEPHANE MURATET/COURTESY OF LOUIS VUITTON
Acknowledging the anniversary, the brand is unveiling five new items during the week-long presentation reprising its collaboration with Atelier Oï, the Campana Brothers and London-based Raw Edge offering new iterations of now-signature pieces.
Atleri Oï’s Aurel Aebi, Armand Louis and Patrick Reymond, who joined the roster of Louis Vuitton collaborators for the first Objets Nomades collection, took a cue from their Belt Chair featuring a metal structure covered in leather strips held in place by belt buckles to develop a lounge chair, a bar stool and side stool, adding wooden details to the former two.
The cloud-shaped Bomboca sofa by Fernando and Humberto Campana — its name nodding to Brazil’s tradition of serving confectionery at weddings and children’s parties — is being remastered in a four-seat version with 11 upholstered cushions filling the leather-covered shell.
Israeli designers Shay Alkalay and Yael Mer of London-based Raw Edges used their penchant for childlike wonders typically embedded in their colorful designs, rich in different patterns, for Cosmic Table, available in indoor and outdoor versions. Boasting a carbon-fiber structure covered in brightly colored, enameled or metallic leather depending on the version, the table is complemented by a glass top.
The Cosmic Table outdoor version designed by London-based Raw Edges for Louis Vuitton’s Objets Nomades collection.
COURTESY OF LOUIS VUITTON
A range of design objects never displayed in Europe before will also punctuate the exhibit. They include Frank Chou’s flowing Signature sofa and armchair; the Campana Brothers’ brightly colored Aguacate sculptural screen and playful Merengue seat; Marcel Wanders Studio’s Petal chair, and Louis Vuitton Studio’s Murano-glass totem Lumineux.
Additionally, Louis Vuitton is taking over a flower kiosk on Piazza San Babila which will be decorated with the leather Origami Flowers created by Atelier Oï and a specially branded newsstand in the same square offering a selection of books that are part of the luxury brand’s in-house publisher’s three travel-focused series “Travel Book,” “Fashion Eye” and “City Guide.”
To further mark its link with Milan, where it has been presenting its Objets Nomades collection since 2015, in addition to Design Miami where they were first introduced in 2012 , the project’s fifth installment will bring the Nova House to the city’s Piazza Duomo.


Designed in 1972 by architects Michel Hudrisier and M. Roma for Studio Rochel, the Nova House is a retrofuturistic ovoid pod with a steel frame covered in 180 strips made of aluminum alloy, which houses two bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen, as well as bathroom fitting into the its 484 square-foot surface.
Louis Vuitton has previously displayed Charlotte Perriand’s La Maison au bord de l’eau in 2015; Matti Suuronen’s Futuro House in 2017; George Candilis’s Hexacube in 2018, and Shigeru Ban’s Paper Temporary Studio in 2019 installing the houses in the courtyards of Palazzo Bocconi and Palazzo Serbelloni where it used to hold its previous Objets Nomades displays.

WWD : Dior Taps Philippe Starck to Reinterpret Medallion Chair

Dior Taps Philippe Starck to Reinterpret Medallion Chair
The Miss Dior chair will be unveiled at the Salone del Mobile in Milan.

PARIS— Just as a fashion designer might spend a lifetime creating the perfect little black dress, Philippe Starck is obsessed with making the ideal chair.
With his new collaboration with Dior, due to be unveiled at the Salone del Mobile furniture fair in Milan, he thinks he’s nailed it. Starck, who is behind iconic designs like the transparent Louis Ghost, was commissioned to put his spin on another medallion chair: the Louis XVI-style model that has been a symbol of Dior since the house was founded in 1947.
The designer, who describes his ethos as a constant striving for minimalist perfection, stripped the classic chair down to its bare bones, and chose to make it in aluminum to emphasize the lightness and purity of its silhouette.


“I can tell you that right now, nothing can be ‘less’ than this chair, and that requires a huge amount of work. You have to literally whittle it down. You have to know the technology,” he told WWD in a Zoom interview.

“I worked to create a totally timeless, definitive design, an icon, so that it will never go out of style,” he added. “We’re right down to the skeleton of the object. That’s why there are very biomorphic shapes in this chair. Semantically, stylistically, we’ve reached the bare minimum.”
Philippe Starck’s sketch for the Miss Dior chair.
COURTESY OF DIOR
The chair will be the centerpiece of the “Dior by Starck” exhibition, due to run from June 7 to 12 at Palazzo Citterio in Milan, which can be visited by prebooking a time slot online. Starck has commissioned sound artist Stephan Crasneanscki to create a soundtrack for the show, inspired by the imagined life of Miss Dior.
The solo presentation reflects Starck’s stature in the design world. For last year’s Salone del Mobile, Dior commissioned more than a dozen participants, including Pierre Yovanovitch, India Mahdavi and Oki Sato of Japanese design firm Nendo, to revisit the medallion chair.
Working with decorator Victor Grandpierre, founder Christian Dior introduced the streamlined neoclassical style that came to define the Dior universe. The oval-back chair was a feature of his couture salon, as well as his store decor, beginning with the brand’s first boutique on Avenue Montaigne.
Starck said the design had entered collective memory, making the collaboration feel natural.
Dubbed Miss Dior, his take presented a logistical challenge. Only one injector, located in Italy, was capable of creating a mold to produce the chair, which is less than one centimeter thick in places. It comes in three models, featuring one, two or no armrests, priced from 1,500 euros to 5,000 euros.
“I chose a difficult material that’s designed to last. It’s made of recyclable aluminum that is very special, quite expensive and rock solid. There’s no reason for this chair ever to break, and that’s already an extraordinary guarantee when you buy it. You know it’s something that can be handed down,” Starck explained.
The designer, who has always promoted democratic products like his 1989 curved toothbrush for Fluocaril, said the project would have been impossible to achieve without a luxury partner like Dior, willing to invest heavily in the production process.


“I’ve always pushed to keep costs down so that everyone can have access to quality design,” he said. “Given the choice, obviously, I would always prefer that. But there are other people who can afford this. Why deny them?”
Philippe Starck’s Miss Dior chair in polished aluminum.
COURTESY OF DIOR
The Miss Dior chair telegraphs luxury, with galvanized metallic finishes including pink copper, black chromium and gold, available in satinated or polished versions. By contrast, the polycarbonate Louis Ghost, produced by Kartell, retails for less than 350 euros — though Starck stands by his use of plastic.
“I don’t change with the wind,” he said. “I will always defend my use of plastic, because I did it for environmental reasons, which is to say that when I make a plastic chair, I don’t cut any trees and I don’t kill any animals.”
Starck notes that the polycarbonate used in the Louis Ghost chair is made from renewable raw materials. “I’ve spent a lot of time working with manufacturers, and today, there are bio-sourced plastics. I’ve been waiting for this moment for 20 years,” he noted.
The designer, who is based in Portugal, is also thinking about more significant ways to reduce our environmental footprint. He’s working on a state-of-the-art complex for space training company Orbit that is designed to leave no trace.
“We’re building a city, but reinventing all the parameters. I want it to be the first reversible town, meaning it can disappear in three months and have the smallest possible footprint,” he explained. “In addition to training people for space, which is the future of the world, I’m potentially creating the cities of the future, too.”
Up next is space itself: commercial space station Axiom Space has commissioned Starck to create the crew quarters inside its privately developed modules, which will be attached to the International Space Station. Expect nest-like interiors sprinkled with hundreds of LED lights with changing colors.
As challenging as that sounds, he believes that nothing is harder to design than a chair, and it will be difficult to top the Miss Dior. “Like a lot of couturiers, I have always been on the quest for the little black dress,” he said. “In terms of chairs, now there is this one.”

WSJ : Elon Musk Threatens to End Twitter Deal Over Lack of Information on Spam A

Elon Musk Threatens to End Twitter Deal Over Lack of Information on Spam Accounts
Twitter says it will continue to share information with Musk; Texas launches investigation of Twitter’s tally of fake bot accounts

Elon Musk threatened to terminate his deal to buy Twitter Inc. TWTR -1.49% in a letter accusing the company of not complying with his request for data on the number of spam and fake accounts on the social-media platform.

Mr. Musk said Twitter has refused to provide the data necessary for him to facilitate his own evaluation of the number of spam and fake accounts. In April, Twitter accepted Mr. Musk’s $44 billion bid to take over the company and go private.

In a letter to Twitter Chief Legal Officer Vijaya Gadde that was disclosed in a regulatory filing Monday, Mr. Musk’s lawyer Mike Ringler said Mr. Musk is entitled to the requested data, in part so that he can facilitate the financing of the deal.

“This is a clear material breach of Twitter’s obligations under the merger agreement and Mr. Musk reserves all rights resulting therefrom, including his right not to consummate the transaction and his right to terminate the merger agreement,” Mr. Ringler wrote.

A Twitter spokesman said the company “will continue to cooperatively share information with Mr. Musk to consummate the transaction in accordance with the terms of the merger agreement.” He added: “We intend to close the transaction and enforce the merger agreement at the agreed price and terms.”

Shares of Twitter fell around 1.5% to $39.57 Monday; the all-cash deal is priced at $54.20 a share.

Also on Monday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched an investigation into Twitter, saying the company may have falsely reported its fake bot accounts in violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. Mr. Paxton’s office ordered Twitter to produce documents on how it calculates and manages its user data and how that information relates to its advertising businesses. Mr. Paxton’s office said Twitter has until June 27 to respond to its demands.

“Texans rely on Twitter’s public statements that nearly all its users are real people,” said Mr. Paxton, a Republican. “It matters not only for regular Twitter users, but also Texas businesses and advertisers who use Twitter for their livelihoods.”

Mr. Musk last year moved the headquarters for his automotive company, Tesla Inc., to Texas from California. The rocket company he runs, Space Exploration Technologies Corp., has large operations in Texas as well.

Mr. Paxton and Twitter have clashed in the past. Last month a federal appeals court ruled that Texas for now can enforce a law prohibiting the internet’s biggest social-media platforms, including Twitter, from suppressing users’ content based on the viewpoint of their speech. Mr. Paxton responded to the ruling with a tweet saying he supported the law and that the Fifth Circuit “made the right call here.”

Mr. Musk’s latest letter is his clearest statement that he may try to abandon the deal, potentially spurring what could be a protracted legal battle between the two sides. As part of the deal, both sides agreed to pay each other a $1 billion breakup fee if they cause the deal not to happen for certain reasons. Twitter could also sue to force Mr. Musk to go through with the transaction.

There are only specific scenarios under which Mr. Musk would be able to simply pay the termination fee to walk away from the transaction, including if regulators try to block the deal or the debt financing falls through.

For years, Twitter had publicly disclosed its own estimate of how many of its daily active users represent false or spam accounts, putting the percentage at fewer than 5% of its monetizable daily active users. Mr. Musk has pegged the figure at least four times as high at 20% of Twitter’s accounts.

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal on May 16 tweeted that the company had shared information with Mr. Musk about how it estimates spam figures. Mr. Musk responded with a poop emoji.

In his letter Monday, Mr. Ringler confirmed Mr. Musk received a response from Twitter on June 1, but said it didn’t satisfy Mr. Musk’s requests. “If Twitter is confident in its publicized spam estimates, Mr. Musk does not understand the company’s reluctance to allow Mr. Musk to independently evaluate those estimates,” the letter said.

As part of the deal, Mr. Musk had waived detailed due diligence that buyers typically perform on targets. In a response to a tweet Monday, Mr. Musk suggested him waiving due diligence didn’t apply to any potential misstatements by Twitter.

Legal experts offered different theories on what may be driving Mr. Musk and his legal team.

“This sounds like they’re trying to shoehorn a due diligence termination right into an agreement that does not have one,” said David Hoppe, a mergers and acquisitions, tech and media attorney with Gamma Law in San Francisco.

Mr. Musk would need to argue that something happened since the time he signed the deal that raised new doubts about the estimates that Twitter provided on the amount of spam and fake accounts on its platform, he said.

“I’m sure Musk’s legal team wishes there was some change of circumstance that would raise doubts about the legitimacy of those numbers, but nothing’s really changed,” Mr. Hoppe said. “There’s no bombshell.”

By linking the fake-account issue to Mr. Musk’s ability to secure financing for the deal, his legal team could be indicating the exit ramp they may try to pursue to extract their client from the transaction, said Ben Means, a professor at the University of South Carolina School of Law. “Financing obviously is necessary to close the transaction,” he said.

Eric Talley, a professor at Columbia Law School, said that while Mr. Musk has the right to request information, Twitter may be unable to share it if doing so would breach another person’s legal rights or undermine the company’s competitive position.

Mr. Musk offered to buy Twitter for $44 billion in April, and the company agreed to the deal the same month. In May, the Tesla chief executive said the deal was “temporarily on hold” because of his concerns over the company’s accounting of the number of fake accounts on its platform.

FT : EU’s strategic autonomy requires new investment momentum

EU’s strategic autonomy requires new investment momentum
Asset managers need more incentives to back important sectors and green transition

Debate around European strategic autonomy is normally framed around geopolitics and security issues, and driven by politics only. That is odd, since it is more of an economic challenge, and a big one at that.

The Covid-19 pandemic, the climate emergency and the war in Ukraine remind us of the consequences of globalisation and dependencies. The EU, as the most open economy in the world, faces big hurdles in the supply of critical goods and is paying the price of lack of self-sufficiency in many sectors. Six sectors stand out as vital for EU strategic autonomy: agriculture, energy, healthcare, materials, technology and defence.

After the last two years, Europeans agree that economic autonomy is essential, as is a green energy transition. Yet the question — on which there is little agreement - is how can we get there by the end of the decade?

Unless economic reality becomes the bedrock for this political goal of European autonomy — and triggers a new investment momentum in Europe - it will not happen.

Strategic autonomy does not mean isolation but lower external dependency with selective reshoring and diversification of supply. It would be economically damaging to do away with the benefits of globalisation, but equally short-sighted to underestimate the costs of Europe’s dependencies.

As investors, there is common ground in the pursuit of economic resilience, a green transition and sustainable investing. Europe’s transition to a low-carbon economy can only be achieved with lower dependencies on some critical sectors such as micro-electronics, which demands semiconductor production to be built in Europe, to avoid supply chain disruption. To become reality, this calls for hundreds of billions of euros of capital expenditure, substantial shareholder capital and positive expected returns on investments. The same logic can be applied to energy, agriculture, technology, healthcare or defence.

This begs the question of how we can get there — and quickly.

Given the scale of the investment needed, public funds alone will not be enough. But if sufficient private capital can be harnessed, the goal becomes achievable. To do that, the current EU regulatory framework must evolve and better incentivise long-term investments to support European strategic ecosystems.

That means a fundamental overhaul of the incentive structure of private investment in key sectors. Public funding guarantees or fiscal incentives, consistent with EU policies, could limit uncertainty around the large investments needed, new technologies and the industrial challenges from energy transition. Long-term shareholders in these sectors could be granted additional voting rights or enhanced dividends net of taxes. This would reduce the pressure of short-termism on companies’ boards.

Today’s EU regulatory framework also favours investment into public debt over corporate debt or equity. It should be changed to encourage institutional and retail investors to support European champions.

Capital requirement directives for banks and solvency rules for insurance companies can be better aligned to the objectives described above. The complexity of Mifid regulation for distributors of investment products to retail investors must be tackled. Europe is not short of capital and ideas, but struggles to close the investment gap in strategic sectors.

Asset managers have an important role to play as the natural link between long-term capital needs and savings as well as educating investors on the benefits of investing in the energy transition and in strategic sectors.

How we, asset managers, act with our investee companies matters too. Voting rights and engagement with managements bring significant power of action. We have a duty to use it judiciously and with a long-term mindset. That means working with investee companies to support, induce and accelerate a just and socially acceptable transition to a low-carbon economy. That includes, of course, companies in sectors such as oil and gas because they are the first ones needing investment to adapt and drastically transform their business models. If they do not swiftly invest their capex, industrial intelligence and experience in producing renewable energies at scale, who will?

To enable investors and savers to support a fair green transition and actively contribute to making Europe’s strategic autonomy a reality, asset managers have their work cut out. Getting them fully on board will unleash the resources and the scale to make this a reality.

FT : EU is on the back foot in inflation fight

EU is on the back foot in inflation fight
ECB is still printing money whereas the Fed and BoE have ceased cash creation

The US stock market briefly entered bear territory last month, defined as a fall of 20 per cent or more. Investors worry that inflation, racing ahead on both sides of the Atlantic, will get worse. Central banks have lost their magic and are struggling to catch up with reality, prompting fears that the cure for inflation will be worse than the affliction.

As investors contemplate recession, the US market’s decline has been led by the great growth stocks and success stories of the past decade. The Nasdaq technology index, from which the FT fund exited after a great run, is now well into bear market territory with losses of more than a quarter.

The broader indices, with old economy stocks including oil and gas, banking and some commodities, have fallen less. Some of these sectors can do well even in these disrupted conditions and provide a brake on the general decline. Two weeks ago we saw a rally.

People are beginning to doubt the wisdom of the central bankers who have made the long bull market possible with their accommodating ways. Why didn’t the governors of the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank grasp that printing too much money usually leads to too much inflation?

US president Joe Biden met with Fed chair Jay Powell last week to remind him that the prime task of the Fed should be to do what it takes to get on top of inflation. It is high and rising prices are hurting the president and his party in the polls as Americans struggle with soaring rent, food and energy bills.

In the regulated world of modern investment funds, managers have to watch out as their fund values fall; they need to keep their funds with the minimum investment levels specified to retain their ratings as growth or balanced portfolios. They may try to switch into more defensive assets, but need to keep enough share risk to justify the fund description.

This makes sense on the basis that bear phases are usually limited in time and magnitude, and that over most longer periods people should make money out of sensibly chosen riskier assets. So we need to explore what might change the downward trend of these gloomy markets. Can the recent rally be sustained?

Whenever central banks threaten further rises in interest rates, it is difficult for markets to rise. Bonds fall because higher interest rates need lower bond prices. Many shares fall because companies face higher interest charges on their borrowings. This erodes profits, and may curb the demand for their goods and services as higher mortgage and credit costs squeeze family incomes.

For as long as inflation remains on the rise or persistently high, it is likely the central banks will stick with their recently acquired hawkishness on rates, regretful that they did not do more last year to arrest growing inflation.

That is why I kept the fund with substantial cash at around 25 per cent and ensured the bond section of the portfolio was in short dated and index linked paper. I have recently switched some of the money out of short dated US Treasury inflation linked into short dated corporate debt as the inflation story is now well known. The corporate bonds offer a bit more income now that rates have risen somewhat from the lows.

The position in Europe is different. Economies are closer to recession on this side of the Atlantic. Germany had a down quarter at the end of last year. While the US is still growing quickly, the European economies are stalling. The Ukraine war looms larger, the stimulus was less substantial and the growth rate slower anyway. The Bank of England was early in stopping money creation and bond buying, which has decelerated the money supply.

The US has great strengths against the present poor outlook, with self sufficiency in gas, a lot of oil and plenty of homegrown grains. Europe in contrast has to import more at sky high and erratic world prices.

Large increases in the cost of basics act like a big tax rise, hitting people and companies. The money they have to pay for energy and food means they have less to spend on other things. Quite a lot of the energy cost is tax, given away to the governments of the producing countries and so lost for domestic spending and output.

One of the oddities is the ECB has still not stopped printing more euros even though six member states in the euro have inflation rates above 10 per cent and the average is now 8.1 per cent.

I am watching to see when the forces creating a slowdown are sufficient to ease price pressures. When do the central banks and governments start to worry more about recession and less about inflation? It seems likely we will be through the rate rising cycle more quickly than gloomy markets currently assume, as the forces of slowdown are very considerable.

We may now have seen growth in US prices and wages peak, which would be good news. If so, that will limit how high interest rates have to go. The Europeans may not be too hawkish with the rate rises being mentioned, as they have left it late to end their money creation and now have serious problems with output as well as prices to balance.

It is, however, still quite early in the shift from fighting inflation to offsetting recession. Labour markets are still stretched, capacity is still too low in many important areas and central banks are still smarting from their big mistakes last year in forecasting low inflation. It will take further cuts in demand to cool the prices of everything from bread to circuses. We are living through a bigger retreat from globalisation, which lowers efficiencies and raises prices. There are still people reluctant to return to the workforce keeping labour markets tight.

The biggest change of all is the ending of extra dollar printing in the US, the termination of sterling creation by the BoE and the likely cessation of more euro printing by the ECB. This removes crucial supportive buying from the bond markets at a time when governments are still needing to sell plenty of debt.

Only Japan keeps pressing the keys for more yen as their inflation defies the winds that fan the price rises elsewhere. Markets are still adjusting to this bad news. They will return to winning ways when we can see an eventual peak to the rate rises and a clearer need for governments to make recession-fighting the priority over inflation.

We may be getting closer to better news on falling inflation, with early signs of cooling in housing markets and even signs that wage increases are peaking. When the authorities see shortages easing, and margins being squeezed to keep prices down, markets will start to look beyond the bad news.

FT : Battle for internal combustion engine splits EU parliament

Battle for internal combustion engine splits EU parliament
MEPs divided on when and how to ban the production of CO₂-emitting cars

Low ambition coalition
When the European parliament’s environment committee last month upheld the target proposed by the European Commission to fully ban the production of CO₂-emitting cars as of 2035, it followed a familiar pattern. (The European parliament usually upholds or even increases the commission’s level of ambition on climate-related policies.)

But that playbook is about to be thrown out the window in tomorrow’s plenary vote, amid a push from industry-proxy centre-right to far-right MEPS to water down that ban and create an unlimited exemption for 10 per cent of the new cars.

In addition, Italian lawmakers are seeking an exemption for small luxury car manufacturers including Ferrari, Bugatti and Lamborghini — in what is now being dubbed the “Ferrari amendment”.

French centrist MEP Pascal Canfin from the Renew group, who chairs the environment committee, says it would be “very strange and unprecedented” for the European parliament to enter negotiations with a lower level of ambition than even member states.

“The vote will be tight, but we’ll do everything we can to stop anti-climate agenda,” he told Europe Express.

Once hailed as a pro-EU, pro-climate majority, the parliament’s top four groups are no longer voting in lockstep, particularly since the largest one, the centre-right European People’s party has lost representation in governments in Berlin, Paris, Madrid and Rome.

Canfin has observed the EPP filing amendments seeking to reduce the ambition of CO₂ emissions in all modes of transport, concluding that “if you add everything up, in the end it’s clearly impossible to meet climate goals.”

He says that if the cars emission targets are watered down, this will “derail” upcoming standards for trucks and aviation and will eventually mean that Europe cannot meet its goal of becoming carbon-neutral by 2050.

The argument floated by the German centre-right (now in opposition), also at national level, where the government seeks a ban on internal combustion engines as of 2035, is that this technology shouldn’t be banned, as it continues to be used elsewhere in the world.

Canfin argues that the ban is not on one technology or the other, just on CO₂ emissions — so if internal combustion engines can be used with CO₂-neutral hydrogen, for instance, that could work too. But he does acknowledge that in terms of personal vehicles, batteries are much more advanced than hydrogen, so that electric cars are already shaping up as the prevailing technology. But hydrogen-fuelled trucks or even planes could contribute to the bloc’s green house gas reduction targets, he said.

In the end, insiders expect some sort of compromise where a small part of the new car fleet produced after 2035 is allowed to emit CO₂, but with an end-date in sight.

>>> US Close Dow +0.05% S&P +0.31% Nasdaq +0.40% Russell +0.36%

Closing Stock Market Summary

A stock market that moved higher in broad-based fashion at the start of today's trading ended the day mixed in disappointing fashion. The main disappointment was the recognition that the early rally effort could not be sustained, especially coming off another week of losses last week.

Some favorable price action in the mega-cap stocks, some optimism over reports that China is loosening COVID restrictions in its largest cities, and some relief from tariff and regulatory matters fueled the initial buying interest.

Solar stocks and Chinese ADRs saw some of the biggest moves. The former were helped by a Wall Street Journal report that said the Biden Administration isn't going to institute any new tariffs on solar imports for two years. The latter got a boost from separate reports suggesting Chinese regulators are ending their probe of Didi (DIDI 2.31, +0.46, +24.9%).

The biggest influences on the major indices, though, were the biggest stocks. The Vanguard Mega-Cap Growth ETF (MGK) gained as much as 2.1%, driven by sizable gains in Tesla (TSLA 714.84, +11.29, +1.6%), which reacted favorably to Elon Musk clarifying that total headcount will increase this year even though salaried staff is apt to remain relatively flat, Amazon.com (AMZN 124.79, +2.44, +2.0%), which split 20-for-1, and Apple (AAPL 146.14, +0.76, +0.5%), which climbed ahead of today's Worldwide Developers Conference.

Those stocks and others, however, could not maintain their opening momentum. They fell prone to renewed selling interest, finishing well off session highs, as interest rates rose and natural gas futures soared. The Vanguard Mega-Cap Growth ETF ended the day up 0.5%.

Briefly, the 10-yr note yield moved back above 3.00%, ending its session up eight basis points at 3.04%, and natural gas futures settled the session up $0.84, or 9.8%, at $9.34/mmbtu. 

WTI crude futures didn't go the way of natural gas futures. They tried early, briefly topping $120.00/bbl on a report that Saudi Arabia is raising oil prices for Asian buyers because of strong demand, but they eventually rolled over and settled the day down $1.01, or 0.8%, at $118.21/bbl.

That move contributed to the underperformance of the S&P 500 energy sector (-0.1%), which vacillated between positive and negative territory. Other underperformers of note included the real estate (-0.3%), health care (unch), information technology (+0.04%), and consumer staples (+0.05%) sectors. 

In general, there wasn't much conviction on either the buy side or the sell side. That showed up in a relatively mixed advance-decline line for the NYSE and Nasdaq, and a sector scoreboard that featured only one sector with a gain of at least 1.0%. That was the consumer discretionary sector (+1.03%), which enjoyed the hefty support of Tesla and Amazon.com. The communication services (+0.98%) and materials (+0.97%) sectors finished just shy of 1.0% gains.

There was no economic data of note out of the U.S. today.

Looking ahead, market participants will receive the April Trade Balance Report (8:30 a.m. ET) and the April Consumer Credit Report (3:00 p.m. ET) on Tuesday.

  • Dow Jones Industrial Average: -9.4% YTD
  • S&P 400: -10.9% YTD
  • S&P 500: -13.5% YTD
  • Russell 2000: -16.0% YTD
  • Nasdaq Composite: -22.9% YTD

>>> US After Hours Summary: Quiet after hours; GTLB +9.4%, HQY +3.2%, COUP +0.6%

After Hours Summary: Quiet after hours; GTLB +9.4%, HQY +3.2%, COUP +0.6% higher on earnings

After Hours Gainers:

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: GTLB +9.4%, HQY +3.2%, COUP +0.6%

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to news: VERU +4.9% (Tang Capital discloses 5.2% stake), PTON +1.1% (CFO to step down; names new CFO), RELY +1.1% (names new CFO), SDC +0.8% (names new CFO), RIG +0.6% (awarded a $181 mln contract extension from Equinor Energy), ZM +0.4% (hires Google Cloud exec to oversee go-to-market strategy), GVA +0.2% (to develop new aggregate operation in Utah)

After Hours Losers:

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: NHI -0.5% (reaffirms FY22 guidance)

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to news: HIPO -1.4% (names new CEO), LSCC -0.9% (expands partnership with AMI), EBS -0.3% (JNJ plans to terminate Covid-19 vaccine supply deal with EBS, according to WSJ), MHO -0.1% (files mixed securities shelf offering), ASR -0.1% (reports May passenger traffic)