FT : Auction for failed UK energy supplier Bulb draws single bid

Auction for failed UK energy supplier Bulb draws single bid
Rival Octopus lodges sole entry to government sale of collapsed group that is leaching taxpayer cash

The British government is scrambling to salvage a deal for collapsed energy supplier Bulb after attempts to auction off the company attracted just a single bid — from its one-time rival Octopus Energy.

The government has been trying to sell Bulb since it collapsed last November after natural gas prices soared and it failed to raise new money. The government stepped in to ensure that its 1.6mn customers would still receive energy and aimed to sell the business by the end of July.

Final bids were due last month and only Octopus, the fifth-biggest UK gas and electricity supplier, tabled an offer after the government “hardballed” suppliers, according to three sources close to the discussions.

Centrica, the largest UK supplier, had been tipped to lodge a bid but pulled out of the competition last month. Masdar, an Abu Dhabi-based company that had been in discussions with the government, declined to submit a bid but may provide financing for Octopus, according to two sources close to the process. A government official confirmed that only one bid had been received.

The government is now in a weakened position as it attempts to agree terms for a sale of Bulb, which is burning through taxpayer cash and losing staff. The company is already expected to cost the government at least £2.2bn, marking the biggest state bailout since Royal Bank of Scotland in 2008.

A ministerial meeting was held last Friday to discuss options for Bulb, which could still include dividing up its customers between other suppliers or handing incentives to Octopus to take them on, said two people close to the sales process.

The terms of Octopus’s offer are not yet clear.

The sources added that the government could decline Octopus’s bid, although it is keen to sell the business as it is haemorrhaging cash as a result of government rules that do not allow it to hedge — or buy in advance the energy it sells. That has left it exposed to volatile gas prices, which have soared since Russia invaded Ukraine.

The Bulb brand has also been tarnished and there is a risk that customers will leave, industry experts said.

The government is “selling a semi-derelict building in a ropey area and they are trying to do the estate agent’s job of making it out to be a des res”, one person close to the sales process said. “This is a market that is a disaster and this is a company that is a disaster within that market.”

One person close to Bulb said they were still optimistic that more bids could come out of the woodwork. Handing the customers to a host of other suppliers could also cause confusion this winter when average energy bills are expected to surge by almost 65 per cent to £3,200 a year, sources close to the sales process said.

Bulb was the biggest supplier out of 31 companies that have failed since the middle of last year as a result of poor capitalisation and inadequate hedging that left them unable to manage the sharp rise in gas prices.

Although millions of customers from other collapsed suppliers have been transferred to solvent rivals, Bulb was considered too large so the costs are currently being borne by taxpayers. All households are already paying £94 a year to cover the cost of failed suppliers but this is expected to rise to £164 a year once the price of Bulb’s administration is eventually spread across customer energy bills, according to analysis by Citizens Advice.

The government and regulator Ofgem’s handling of the crisis has been strongly criticised after founders and shareholders have been allowed to walk away without penalty while households across the country bore the “brunt” of the supplier failures, according to a National Audit Office report.

Hayden Wood, chief executive and founder of Bulb, has received the same £250,000 salary as before the company’s rescue until he steps down at the end of this month. Wood and his co-founder Amit Gudka both earned more than £8mn from a share sale in 2018.

Octopus, Bulb and Teneo, the administrator, declined to comment. Masdar had not replied to a request for comment at the time of publication.

FT : Airbus chief says supply chain crisis will last until 2023

Airbus chief says supply chain crisis will last until 2023
Guillaume Faury cites other sector-wide challenges of components, labour shortages and inflation

Airbus expects the supply chain crisis gripping the global aerospace industry to last until next year while suppliers struggle to increase production as the world emerges from the pandemic.

Guillaume Faury, chief executive of the world’s largest plane maker, said the crisis would not be resolved in the next two or three months.

“We guess, a year as an order of magnitude. We have difficulties to believe that in two years from now it’s not going to be resolved. This is not unusual. It is just the depth and magnitude of what’s happening [which] is more than what we’ve seen in previous crises,” Faury told the Financial Times at the Farnborough Air Show.

Like other global manufacturers, including US rival Boeing, Airbus is struggling with shortages of raw materials, electronic components and other parts.

“It’s bad everywhere . . . The global supply chains have real difficulties to operate normally and it’s not just an aerospace issue,” Faury said, adding that for the industry, the constraints were also happening “at the moment of demand”. 

Other challenges, he added, included industry-wide labour shortages, as well as higher inflation and energy costs.

Airbus is working on contingency plans to ensure its main manufacturing operations in Europe can continue to operate if there are energy shortages this winter.

In Germany, the government has asked large industrial users to make preparations for a potential cut-off of gas supplies from Russia.

Faury said the group was exploring options for cutting energy use, including asking some people to work from home again.

“We also have ideas to work in sequence differently to reduce the peak energy that is required.” He added that the company was starting to talk to governments to explore options and come up with adaptations.

In the supply chain, deliveries of engines have been a particular issue, he said.

Airbus now has 26 “gliders” — aircraft that have been built but are sitting in storage without engines. This is a particular issue for Airbus as it plans to increase production of its best-selling family of A320 jets to 75 a month by 2025, with an interim target to reach 65 a month by the middle of 2023 from about 50 currently.

Faury said he thought the company was “at the low point” of the problem but expressed frustration with engine manufacturers. “Not all engine makers started early enough to ramp up again, in spite of what we told them. Some of them waited too long.”

CFM International, the joint venture between Safran and GE, and Pratt & Whitney, which both provide A320 engines, had however signalled they were back on track, he said, adding he expected Airbus to have no remaining gliders by the end of the year.

In separate interviews, Olivier Andriès CEO of Safran, and Greg Hayes, CEO of Raytheon, the US group that owns Pratt & Whitney, both acknowledged the problems.

Andries said the industry had “swung from an unprecedented demand shock in 2020 to an unprecedented supply shock today”.

“When the traffic started to come back in the summer of 2021, the [plane makers] asked us to reverse gear — to accelerate like hell,” he added, noting that his focus for now was on the recovery and meeting targets in 2023.

Hayes told the FT that the company had, as predicted in February, ended the first half of the year about 70 engines behind schedule. “We ended about 70 behind and we’ve got a path to recovery, but it’s taken a lot longer and more resources than we thought.”

>>> US After Hours :  NFLX +8.2% jumps as net adds better than expected, other s

 NFLX +8.2% jumps as net adds better than expected, other streaming names also higher; OMC +7.1% also up big on earnings

After Hours Summary:

After Hours Gainers:

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: NFLX +8.2% (also to acquire animation studio Animal Logic), OMC +7.1%, FULT +3.6%, NBHC +3.3%, MATX +1.7%, CALM +0.5% (also to pay $0.75/sh dividend as part of variable div policy)

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to news: AEHR +7.1% (receives $12.8 mln in orders from its lead silicon carbide test and burn-in customer), ROKU +2.9% (in sympathy with NFLX earnings), FUBO +2.7% (in sympathy with NFLX earnings), INZY +2.4% (announces preliminary data from Phase 1/2 trial of INZ-701), DIS +2.4% (in sympathy with NFLX earnings), WBD +1.8% (in sympathy with NFLX earnings; also plans to add massive collection of A24 films to HBO Max, according to ScreenRant), PARA +1.2% (in sympathy with NFLX earnings), TSLA +1% (ordered to pay $10.5 mln in from car accident, according to Reuters), AIR +1% (awarded a Captains of Industry contract with the Defense Logistics Agency), NVAX +0.7% (confirms that CDC Advisory Committee voted unanimously to recommend COVID-19 vaccine), VALE +0.5% (provides Q2 production and sales data), GOGL +0.4% (files mixed securities shelf offering), EA +0.4% (CTO to depart; co to structure with two pillars, naming two separate CTOs for each division), BA +0.4% (VietJet places order for 200 737 MAX jets, according to Bloomberg), BV +0.1% (acquires commercial landscaping co), DCP +0.1% (increases dividend)

After Hours Losers:

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: FOR -17%, IBKR -1.4%, JBHT -1.3%, PNFP -0.4%

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to news: VBLT -78% (announces top-line data from OVAL Trial), RVMD -9.8% (stock offering), LQDA -3.9% (US patent office rules in its favor), OMIC -2.4% (files for $250 mln mixed securities shelf offering), LSCC -1.5% (collaborates with LG to bring edge AI technology to LG's 2022 premium laptop lineup), BLTE -0.7% (submits IND application to FDA for LBS-008 Phase 3 clinical trial), XOS -0.5% (announces Q2 deliveries), QGEN -0.3% (surpasses 3 mln NGS patient test cases), KKR -0.1% (acquires Atlantic Yards from Hines)

FT : BoE governor says half-point interest rate rise ‘on table’

BoE governor says half-point interest rate rise ‘on table’
Historic tightening may be needed to return UK’s 40-year high inflation rate to central bank’s 2% target, says Bailey


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Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey has raised the possibility of increasing interest rates by half a percentage point in early August as he toughened the central bank’s language on battling rising prices.

Bailey said the central bank’s Monetary Policy Committee had an “absolute priority” to bring inflation back down to its 2 per cent target and faced the “largest challenge” to inflation control since the bank gained independence on setting interest rates in 1997.

With June inflation figures likely to rise to another 40-year high of at least 9.3 per cent on Wednesday, Bailey set out the policy options under consideration by the MPC.

A half-percentage-point interest rate rise would be the largest increase since 1995. The governor also raised the BoE’s thinking for the first time on selling some of the assets it bought under rounds of quantitative easing since 2009.

“In simple terms this means that a 50 basis point increase will be among the choices on the table when we next meet,” Bailey told an audience of financial and business leaders at the annual Mansion House dinner in the City of London.

Financial markets increasingly expect the European Central Bank to increase its main interest rates also by half a percentage point on Thursday.

Bailey said there was no guarantee a UK increase would be that large, adding that the committee would have to take into account the easing of global supply chain bottlenecks as well as higher gas, food and fuel prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“We have been clear that we see the balance of risks to inflation as on the upside,” Bailey said.

The governor acknowledged that interest rate rises would come at a time when people in the UK were becoming poorer and struggling over accessing basic necessities, saying the BoE had already taken this into account when it set monetary policy.

Regarding the sale of assets, Bailey set out quite an aggressive timetable for bringing down the level of government bonds it had bought, which peaked at £895bn.

“Based on analysis conducted in conjunction with colleagues at the debt management office, we are currently looking at a total reduction in the stock of gilts held . . . in the region of £50bn‐£100bn in the first year,” Bailey said.

While the governor admitted challenges in battling inflation, chancellor Nadhim Zahawi threw a protective arm around the BoE, saying it had “a strong track record” on price control and had all the tools it needed to succeed.

The bank has faced criticism from Tory leadership contenders, including foreign secretary Liz Truss, who said she would tighten ministerial scrutiny of its activities if she became prime minister.

Meanwhile, Zahawi confirmed the government was considering taking powers to “intervene in financial regulation in the public interest”, a plan that has infuriated Bailey, who wants to preserve regulatory independence.

But Zahawi said the government would look at all the arguments before coming to a decision; the move is so controversial that any change to the rules will be left until September when a prime minister will be appointed and, possibly, a new chancellor.

The “call in” power, which is supported by Sunak, will not feature in the financial services bill to be published on Wednesday but could be added if he becomes prime minister.

Zahawi also flagged the importance of reforms to Solvency II rules to allow UK insurers to invest more in infrastructure alongside other reforms to London’s capital markets to make it easier for companies to raise money.

On Tuesday, the Treasury published the results of a review of the fundraising market by Freshfields’ lawyer Mark Austin, which recommended regulatory changes to increase the ability of companies to raise funds quickly and cheaply, and ensure greater involvement of retail investors.

In response, the Financial Conduct Authority said this aligned with its “strategic priority to ensure UK wholesale markets continued to be regarded as one of the leading global markets of choice for issuers, intermediaries and investors by identifying ways to streamline further capital raising by publicly traded companies and promote access for investors”.

>>> US Close Dow +2.43% S&P 2.76% Nasdaq +3.11% Russell +3.50%

Closing Market Summary: NFLX +8.2% jumps as net adds better than expected, other streaming names also higher; OMC +7.1% also up big on earnings

After Hours Summary:

After Hours Gainers:

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: NFLX +8.2% (also to acquire animation studio Animal Logic), OMC +7.1%, FULT +3.6%, NBHC +3.3%, MATX +1.7%, CALM +0.5% (also to pay $0.75/sh dividend as part of variable div policy)

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to news: AEHR +7.1% (receives $12.8 mln in orders from its lead silicon carbide test and burn-in customer), ROKU +2.9% (in sympathy with NFLX earnings), FUBO +2.7% (in sympathy with NFLX earnings), INZY +2.4% (announces preliminary data from Phase 1/2 trial of INZ-701), DIS +2.4% (in sympathy with NFLX earnings), WBD +1.8% (in sympathy with NFLX earnings; also plans to add massive collection of A24 films to HBO Max, according to ScreenRant), PARA +1.2% (in sympathy with NFLX earnings), TSLA +1% (ordered to pay $10.5 mln in from car accident, according to Reuters), AIR +1% (awarded a Captains of Industry contract with the Defense Logistics Agency), NVAX +0.7% (confirms that CDC Advisory Committee voted unanimously to recommend COVID-19 vaccine), VALE +0.5% (provides Q2 production and sales data), GOGL +0.4% (files mixed securities shelf offering), EA +0.4% (CTO to depart; co to structure with two pillars, naming two separate CTOs for each division), BA +0.4% (VietJet places order for 200 737 MAX jets, according to Bloomberg), BV +0.1% (acquires commercial landscaping co), DCP +0.1% (increases dividend)

After Hours Losers:

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: FOR -17%, IBKR -1.4%, JBHT -1.3%, PNFP -0.4%

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to news: VBLT -78% (announces top-line data from OVAL Trial), RVMD -9.8% (stock offering), LQDA -3.9% (US patent office rules in its favor), OMIC -2.4% (files for $250 mln mixed securities shelf offering), LSCC -1.5% (collaborates with LG to bring edge AI technology to LG's 2022 premium laptop lineup), BLTE -0.7% (submits IND application to FDA for LBS-008 Phase 3 clinical trial), XOS -0.5% (announces Q2 deliveries), QGEN -0.3% (surpasses 3 mln NGS patient test cases), KKR -0.1% (acquires Atlantic Yards from Hines)

WSJ : Genesis Lent $2.4 Billion to Hedge Fund Three Arrows Capital

Genesis Lent $2.4 Billion to Hedge Fund Three Arrows Capital
Crypto brokerage’s parent company, Digital Currency Group, filed claim for $1.2 billion

Digital Currency Group Inc., the cryptocurrency conglomerate that owns Genesis Global Trading Inc., is the biggest creditor of the beleaguered hedge fund Three Arrows Capital Ltd., according to court documents compiled by Three Arrows’s liquidator.

DCG’s Genesis Asia Pacific Ltd. lent Three Arrows $2.4 billion, the court document said. The hedge fund put down the equivalent of $1.2 billion in crypto and other collateral as of last month.

Three Arrows, founded in 2012 by Su Zhu and Kyle Davies, was ordered into liquidation last month after creditors sued the hedge fund for failure to repay debts. The hedge fund suffered heavy losses in recent months amid a broad selloff in cryptocurrencies.

The court documents released Monday provided the most comprehensive look at creditors to Three Arrows yet. The filing named more than two dozen entities that in total had lent $3.5 billion worth of dollars and crypto assets to Three Arrows, as of Monday’s market value, though some of those loans might have been partially repaid.

The court records also underlined the difficulties that Three Arrows’s creditors and its court-appointed liquidators have faced in connecting with Messrs. Zhu and Davies, and raised concerns that the founders had used their firm’s funds on extravagant personal expenses.

Mr. Zhu recently put a house he bought for $35 million in December on the market. The property is “one of the most prestigious forms of housing” in Singapore, Charles McGarraugh, chief strategy officer of Blockchain.com, wrote in an affidavit, citing media reports.

WSJ : Celsius Defends Decision to Halt Withdrawals at Debut Bankruptcy Hearing

Celsius Defends Decision to Halt Withdrawals at Debut Bankruptcy Hearing
The cryptocurrency lender said the move was necessary to safeguard customers’ financial interests as users fled and crypto assets sold off

Celsius Network LLC tried to ease customers’ anger over its freeze on account withdrawals, but indicated it doesn’t intend to quickly release their funds as the cryptocurrency lender aims to weather the downturn in digital currencies and craft a repayment plan.

Celsius lawyers used the company’s debut appearance in bankruptcy court Monday to defend its decision to halt withdrawals last month, saying that was necessary to safeguard customers’ financial interests as users fled and crypto assets sold off.

“The reality is the pause was necessary in order to preserve the assets that the company has so they can be…equitably distributed to all of the platform’s customers,” Celsius lawyer Patrick Nash Jr. said.

The company intends to use the breathing spell of chapter 11 to help it withstand the crypto downturn and come up with a repayment plan for its users, Mr. Nash said.

Judge Martin Glenn of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York expressed concerns that continued volatility in cryptocurrencies could affect the company’s restructuring. The judge also raised questions about customer funds held in custody accounts, which represent about 4% of Celsius’s deposits, worth about $180 million, on behalf of roughly 58,000 users, court papers show.

It is an open legal question whether those funds are “truly a custodial account, truly in-trust,” Mr. Nash said. Custodial funds are isolated and will continue to be held in an identifiable account until the legal issue is decided in bankruptcy court, Mr. Nash said.

“I can certainly understand $180 million is a lot of money,” Judge Glenn said. “I can certainly understand the frustration if people believe they signed documentation that this was a custody account, and if it’s held in trust they want to be able to access it.”

Monday’s hearing was intended to ease Celsius’s entry into chapter 11, where customers are the key creditor constituency. Celsius has no funded debt, court papers show.

A government lawyer with the Justice Department’s bankruptcy division said it is working to assemble an official committee that would represent customers’ interests during the chapter 11 case, paid for by Celsius.

During Monday’s hearing, Celsius lawyers said the company is facing customer blowback over its decision last month to pause withdrawals. It faced a run on the bank, meaning customers who left funds on the platform would have been left “holding the bag” had withdrawals continued, Mr. Nash said.

Some Celsius employees received death threats and hate mail, lawyers said, adding that outrage was partly fueled by the company’s relative silence in the weeks leading up to the bankruptcy.

In court papers last week, Chief Executive Alex Mashinsky disclosed a roughly $1.2 billion hole in the company’s balance sheet. Celsius also has said it owes users more than $4.7 billion, which represents most of the crypto lender’s $5.5 billion in total liabilities.

Celsius said in court on Monday that the value of its assets have fallen by about $17.8 billion since March 30, to $4.3 billion from roughly $22.1 billion.

One avenue to repay customers is through the expansion of an existing bitcoin-mining business that makes money at current prices and would become more valuable if the cryptocurrency market improves, according to the company.

Founded in 2017 by Mr. Mashinsky, S. Daniel Leon and Nuke Goldstein, Celsius allowed users to earn interest payments on cryptocurrency deposits and take out loans using those cryptocurrencies as collateral.

On Monday, Mr. Nash said no new customer accounts are being opened. Celsius also said it is no longer issuing margin calls or liquidating collateral to satisfy loans, according to court documents.

The company pitched itself as a safe alternative to traditional banks and promised users high interest rates. It was valued at about $3 billion after raising $690 million in a Series B financing round in May, according to the bankruptcy filing.

Celsius is scheduled to appear in bankruptcy court again next month.

WSJ : One Hedge Fund Is Up 223% This Year Thanks to a Big Bet Against Tech Stock

One Hedge Fund Is Up 223% This Year Thanks to a Big Bet Against Tech Stocks
Coltrane Asset Management reaped profits on a two-year short of tech and growth companies

In late 2020, Mandeep Manku made a big contrarian bet.

His hedge fund, Coltrane Asset Management, had already been hit hard when markets plunged because of Covid-19. He decided to swing Coltrane’s portfolio from favoring cheap European companies to betting against tech and other fast-growing companies in the U.S. Markets with so many stocks trading at more than 10 times their revenues, with fervor concentrated in a few sectors, “always end poorly for investors,” Coltrane told clients in a September 2020 presentation.

It almost ended poorly for Mr. Manku. By the end of 2020, Coltrane’s short had backfired as markets roared back, led by tech. Clients started to bail, and the fund lost 56% for the year. Despite gaining 19% in 2021, the hedge fund, which had once managed more than $1 billion, had dwindled to less than $200 million by January 2022.

Then tech stocks plunged.


Coltrane is now up 223% this year through June, according to people familiar with the matter, one of the biggest percentage gains this year by a hedge fund. The total gain is several hundred million dollars.

While growth-focused hedge funds were recording steep losses and companies were slashing their valuations, Coltrane reaped profits. Declines in the stock prices of pandemic darlings like Netflix Inc. and Peloton Interactive Inc. contributed, as did shorts on Meta Platforms Inc., videogame platform Roblox Corp. and electric-truck maker Rivian Automotive Inc., investors said. A bet against used-car website Carvana Co., whose stock price has plunged about 90% this year, contributed 9 percentage points of the gains, said a person familiar with the fund.

Mr. Manku and his team kept the trade on for two years, adding to bets as stock prices fell and cycling companies in and out of the trade. Coltrane placed bearish options bets that supercharged its returns, all while avoiding pressure to shut down.

“He’s a conviction manager,” said Stuart Roden, an early Coltrane investor and ex-chairman of European hedge-fund firm Lansdowne Partners. “He didn’t get out at the wrong time. That’s extremely difficult.”

Mr. Roden said he wasn’t as worried about the trade, whose analytical foundations he believed were sound, as he was about whether Mr. Manku would be able to see it through. “In our industry, lots of people who ended up right weren’t able to be there when they were right because they were closed out or clients took their money away.”

Mr. Manku and partners Nick Banner and Laura Webster told clients the hyper growth some of these companies saw during Covid wouldn’t continue in the way their management teams and shareholders expected.

Lots of insider selling at fast-growing companies was a signal, too. “Those who know these companies’ prospects best are taking their capital out,” the September 2020 investor presentation said, calling out insider sales at several companies.

Coltrane has locked in many of the gains from the shorts and is overall long the market again, though it still has some bets against growth stocks, said people familiar with the fund. Mr. Manku believes a greater opportunity now exists in snapping up cheap European companies, the fund’s historic area of focus.

Mr. Manku has told others Coltrane’s returns this year reflect a moment in time and that long-term performance is what matters. Since its 2012 start through June, the fund has gained 19% a year on average.

“Success is about having a consistent approach that’s true to your world view, staying grounded and calm,” Mr. Manku said in a statement. “We are still very much at the beginning of our journey but have, we hope, learned a few valuable lessons already.”

Mr. Manku, 38 years old, grew up in rural northwest England and developed an early fascination with stock markets and valuation. By high school, he was active on internet message boards dedicated to stock analysis and was investing for himself and friends in an account he’d opened in his mother’s name, with her blessing.

He warned of frothy, momentum-driven markets in a letter he wrote as a 16-year-old that was published in an investing magazine in 2000. “The key to safely defusing this situation will be difficult, for it would involve derating many obviously overvalued hi-tech companies, and sacrificing performance (and bonuses) in the aid of sustainable share price growth,” he wrote.

Still, he suffered large losses when the dot-com bubble burst. Friends say that early lesson to adjust his portfolio to reflect his beliefs was formative for Mr. Manku.

After stints at Deutsche Bank in London and Daniel Loeb’s Third Point in New York, Mr. Manku—an improvisational saxophonist—started Coltrane in 2012 with less than $50 million and named it after the musician John Coltrane. Investors and friends describe him as private and focused on his track record rather than the size of his fund. He eschews idea dinners and chose to base his Europe-focused firm in New York, rather than London, to avoid crowd-think.

The trade was harrowing at times. In 2020, Mr. Manku started taking long runs along the West Side Highway during market hours to blow off steam. He once accidentally ran the equivalent of a marathon.

The team started to sense the tide was turning in April 2021, when special-purpose acquisition companies began to have trouble raising money. The conviction grew stronger in the fall as companies increasingly began to tout the metaverse, which struck Coltrane as being invented to suggest higher potential valuations for companies, and as the team saw more write-downs by buy-now, pay-later companies.

Mr. Manku has since told investors that if he were to execute the trade all over again, he might wait to put it on, lessening the pain Coltrane and its clients, including endowments and foundations, took in the interim.

“He’s pretty humble right now,” one Coltrane investor said of Mr. Manku. “He knows that if he were a stock, he would be short it; he understands he’s due for the pendulum to shift. But he’s always focused on the game.”