FT : KKR makes buyout offer for Telecom Italia

KKR makes buyout offer for Telecom Italia
Deal would be among biggest private equity purchases of a European telecoms group

Telecom Italia is to hold an emergency board meeting on Sunday to evaluate a takeover offer from US private equity group KKR, a deal that would be one of the largest telecoms buyouts of all time.

KKR already holds a 37.5 per cent stake in Telecom Italia’s “last mile” network but has moved to make a full offer for the entire company, according to three people with direct knowledge of the situation.

The offer for the Italian group, which is valued at €7.5bn and has net debt of €22.5bn, is the latest sign of private equity interest in the European telecoms sector. Funds are looking to break up businesses, separating the networks from the consumer businesses, to realise value or to improve the performance of the companies.

Telecom Italia, which was the subject of a bitter tug of war for control four years ago between French investor Vivendi and US activist fund Elliott Management, has struggled in recent quarters and issued two profit warnings in the past year.

The shares have declined by a third since March, and two-thirds since 2018, piling pressure on Luigi Gubitosi, the Italian establishment figure who was appointed chief executive in 2018, to turn the company round.

News of the bid was first reported by Corriere della Sera.

Vivendi denied it was in talks with KKR or CVC — as had been reported — or any other institution over a potential take-private from Telecom Italia.

“Vivendi is a long-term shareholder and we want to work with the government and other institutions to get Telecom Italia back on track,” the company said. “We’re not happy with the performance . . . The important thing is to stop this ship from going down.”

Telecom Italia was Europe’s most valuable telecoms company in the 1990s but has lurched from crisis to crisis over the past two decades. It is a politically important company and the government has a “golden power” to block takeovers or asset sales not deemed to be in the national interest.

KKR is one of the most active investors in European telecoms. It bought a minority stake in Telecom Italia’s secondary network for €1.8bn last year, through its infrastructure arm, and was part of a consortium of private equity groups that took the Spanish telecoms operator MasMovil private in a €5bn deal last year. It bought Hyperoptic, a UK full-fibre company, in 2019.

The US buyout group previously approached Dutch telecoms provider KPN with a takeover offer, which was rejected this year alongside a separate approach from EQT and Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners. Either move would have been one of the largest private equity takeover attempts in European history.

Challenges : Automobile: des hybrides rechargeables pas si verts

Automobile: des hybrides rechargeables pas si verts
En surpoids, ces autos à la double motorisation émettent plus de CO2que les modèles traditionnels quand elles basculent de l’électrique au thermique.

Les hybrides rechargeables cartonnent. Leurs ventes ont dépassé 8% du marché français sur les neuf premiers mois de l’année avec plus de 100.000 immatriculations. Autant que les voitures 100% électriques (voir graphique). Dans l’Hexagone, Peugeot règne en maître devant Mercedes-Benz et Renault, notamment grâce à son SUV compact 3008. La version hybride représente plus de 30% des achats de ce modèle, malgré son surcoût. Car il faut en effet débourser 45.400 euros au minimum, contre 34.000 pour un modèle à essence équivalent. Ces succès soulèvent cependant des questions… Quelle est l’espérance de vie de ces voitures à double motorisation que les constructeurs ont concoctées pour pallier la mort programmée des véhicules essence et diesel?

Une fin annoncée en 2035
Dans sa feuille de route publiée mi-juillet, la Commission européenne exige en effet le bannissement total des moteurs thermiques en 2035, ce qui condamne les rechargeables. Certes, la proposition de Bruxelles doit encore être ratifiée par le Conseil puis le Parlement européen. "Il y a une volonté forte [du gouvernement] pour prolonger les hybrides rechargeables au-delà de 2035", livre un conseiller de l’Elysée. Mais la France apparaît bien seule au sein de l’Union pour réclamer ce sursis.

Pourquoi cet anathème de Bruxelles? Les hybrides rechargeables séduisent les automobilistes par leur polyvalence d’utilisation et une autonomie proche de celle d’un véhicule thermique. Ils se distinguent des électriques pures, au rayon d’action limité et à la recharge problématique quand les bornes manquent ou qu’elles sont en panne. Cependant, une étude publiée par l’ONG Transport & Environnement (T&E) en novembre 2020 dénonçait des émissions autrement plus élevées dans les conditions réelles d’utilisation que lors des cycles d’homologation. Les SUV BMW X5, Volvo XC60 et Mitsubishi Outlander essayés par l’association auraient rejeté entre 28 et 89% de CO2 en plus par rapport aux tests officiels. Et ce, batterie pleine. Avec une batterie vide, ces trois véhicules font bien pire, rejetant alors trois à huit fois plus de CO2 que les valeurs officielles! Fâcheux.

"Les seuils d’émission affichés sont trompeurs, le véhicule hybride rechargeable est une chimère", tranche donc Diane Strauss, directrice France de T&E. Ferdinand Dudenhöffer, directeur du Center Automotive Research (CAR) basé en Allemagne, n’y va pas non plus par quatre chemins: "Le rechargeable, c’est cher et ce n’est pas bien."

3 litres de plus aux 100 km
Le vrai problème – mais aussi son avantage –, c’est que, une fois épuisées les quelques dizaines de kilomètres d’autonomie électrique permises par les batteries, la voiture peut continuer de rouler… à l’essence. Et, à partir de là, ce n’est plus vraiment écologique. Car ces véhicules dotés d’une double motorisation et de batteries pèsent forcément plus lourd que de simples modèles thermiques. Un Peugeot 3008 Hybrid4 affiche ainsi 300 kg de plus que la version diesel. Résultat: dès que la batterie est vide, le "bon élève" surconsomme 3 litres de plus aux 100 km, selon les constatations de Challenges, et 1,5 litre de plus que le véhicule équivalent à essence. En conséquence, il rejette plus de CO2, consommations et émissions de gaz à effet de serre étant strictement corrélés.

Or, les automobilistes qui possèdent ces modèles se soucient peu de recharger régulièrement leurs batteries, accusent les ONG. Et ce, notamment lorsqu’il s’agit de voitures achetées par les entreprises pour leurs employés, ces hybrides rechargeables offrant des avantages fiscaux comme l’absence de malus ou un calcul de la TVS (taxe sur les véhicules de sociétés) très avantageux. C’est un "critère primordial pour les directions des achats lorsqu’elles arrêtent leurs choix de véhicules de fonction", assure le gestionnaire de flottes Arval. Qui plus est, "les salariés qui conduisent un véhicule de société se préoccupent rarement d’économiser un carburant qu’ils ne paient pas de leur poche", concède l’Association des constructeurs européens d’automobiles (Acea).

Alors, inepte l’hybride rechargeable? Non, car le comportement des conducteurs n’est pas aussi caricatural que le dénoncent les associations écologistes. Une étude interne de Renault portant sur 22.800 utilisateurs du petit SUV Captur E-Tech rechargeable montre que "40% d’entre eux le rechargent une à cinq fois par semaine et consomment à peine 2,8 litres d’essence en moyenne", plaide Gilles Le Borgne, directeur de l’ingénierie du groupe au losange. Mieux, chez BMW, une enquête portant sur un échantillon proche conclut que 46% des utilisateurs rechargent tous les jours et plus de 30% tous les quatre jours.

Points de recharge gratuite
De son côté, Ford a constaté que les usagers du SUV compact Kuga parcouraient la moitié de leurs trajets en mode zéro émission. "Nos clients sont désireux d’utiliser leur voiture en mode électrique autant que possible", insiste Roelant de Waard, directeur général des véhicules particuliers chez Ford Europe. Pour inciter ses clients à rouler en électrique, BMW distribue même des points de recharge gratuite. Il y a déjà 1.830 utilisateurs actifs de ce programme en France.

Plus sérieusement, BMW propose une technologie embarquée "e-drive zone" permettant aux hybrides rechargeables de basculer automatiquement en mode électrique lorsqu’ils entrent dans une ZFE (zone à faibles émissions) qui se généralisent dans les centres-villes. De plus, sur un trajet donné, le GPS calcule comment garder une autonomie électrique suffisante pour que la voiture puisse basculer en mode électrique à l’arrivée en ville. Pour changer les comportements, Vincent Cobée, directeur de Citroën, propose que les employeurs suppriment la carte de carburant en la remplaçant par une carte de… recharge.

La filière auto impactée
Les politiques planchent, eux, sur des solutions plus draconiennes pour contraindre les conducteurs à rouler en mode électrique dans les zones à faibles émissions, les contrôler et leur infliger des amendes, si besoin. Seulement voilà: il faut cinq heures pour recharger les batteries sur une prise domestique pour un Renault Captur E-Tech, six pour un Ford Kuga. Mais c’est deux ou trois fois pire sur les modèles 100% électriques.

Si la France plaide pour ces hybrides, c’est surtout parce que l’"abandon des technologies des moteurs thermiques dans un délai aussi court serait problématique pour la filière auto", estime Marc Mortureux, directeur général de la Plateforme automobile (PFA). Le secteur pourrait "perdre 45.000 emplois dans les trois ans", avance Claude Cham, ex-président de la Fédération des équipementiers (Fiev). Or, le maintien des hybrides plutôt qu’un basculement vers le tout électrique en 2035 permettrait de limiter la casse. Car ils recourent en grande partie à des technologies mécaniques traditionnelles, qui nécessitent "plus de main-d’œuvre que les électriques purs", reconnaît Marc Mortureux.

Le rechargeable à la rescousse des emplois? Problème: en même temps qu’il affiche sa volonté de leur offrir un sursis face à Bruxelles, le gouvernement français va supprimer tout bonus en juillet prochain sur ces hybrides rechargeables, qui atteignait 2.000 euros en 2019. En revanche, il les maintient sur les voitures électriques. Un message politique pour le moins brouillé.

NY Post : Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? Two men claimed to be the inventor of Bitcoin

Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? Two men claimed to be the inventor of Bitcoin

A new lawsuit claims that the late David Kleiman created Bitcoin with Craig Wright. But Wright says he is the real man behind Satoshi Nakamoto.NY Post photo composite
Depending on who you believe, computer scientist Craig Wright is either the mysterious Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto — one of the most influential men of the modern age and the 15th wealthiest person in the world — or a crafty Aussie who is trying to trick the world and cheat the estate of a dead man.
Or both.
In a court case now unfolding in West Palm Beach, Fla., Ira Kleiman, the brother of the late computer-security specialist David Kleiman, maintains that his brother and Wright developed the original digital currency credited to the Nakamoto pseudonym.
Ira claims that, as a result, he is entitled to half of Wright’s crypto trove: some $64 billion in Bitcoin (by Friday’s valuation).
If Wright is Satoshi, as he claims on his private Instagram page (which contains just one post), then he holds 1.1 million Bitcoin and is worth tens of billions of dollars.
Ira Kleiman (above) claims that his deceased brother David and Wright were co-creators of Bitcoin.
AP
“The theory of the case is that a partnership was formed to create and mine a significant amount of Bitcoin under the name Satoshi Nakamoto,” Vel Freedman, the attorney representing Ira Kleiman, told The Post. “Evidence [in the form of emails] shows that Craig and Dave agreed to keep their partnership a secret. Nobody knew about it until Craig began telling [the Kleiman] family some details after Dave passed away [in 2013] and Craig decided to keep the fortune for himself.”
“We believe the court will find there’s nothing to indicate or record that they were in a partnership,” said Andrés Rivero, a lawyer for Wright.
Kleiman, a paraplegic, died under terrible conditions. When he was discovered, his body had begun to decompose, open bottles of alcohol were scattered around and, according to the complaint, there was “a loaded handgun next to him. A bullet hole in his mattress was found. The exact details surrounding his death remain unknown.”
If he himself had a stash of Bitcoin, it was never recovered and there was no known password.
Bitcoin started in 2008, after “Nakamoto” published online an open-source paper introducing a new form of digital currency: designed to be used without the need for a central bank. Its initial worth was less than a penny. Today, the value is nearly $58,000 per coin.
David Kleiman was a digital-security expert who left behind no trace of Bitcoin when he died — but could he be one-half of the team behind the currency’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto?
Nakamoto came up with the idea for “coins” created by solving increasingly complex calculations that would eventually require extremely powerful computers. The number of Bitcoins in circulation will top out after a finite 21 million are mined — unlike traditional currency, which can be endlessly minted.
The identity of Nakamoto has become one of the great mysteries of our time, with everyone from Elon Musk to Swedish video-game developer Vili Lehdonvirta to American computer scientist Nick Szabo being tossed around as the man behind the myth. Wright, however, is the one person to step up and actually claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto.
While testifying on the witness stand earlier this month, Wright, according to coindesk.com, claimed to have written the white paper that laid out the inner workings of Bitcoin and was credited to Satoshi Nakamoto.
But there are vehement doubters who do not believe that Wright is the real Nakamoto.
“He’s lying, full stop,” maintained the well-regarded security researcher Dan Kaminsky via Twitter. “Satoshi signed a transaction in 2009. Wright copied that specific signature and tried to pass it off as new.”
Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist, has long claimed he is Nakamoto — and that only he is — but has never offered up definitive proof.
Getty Images for CoinGeek
Others believe that neither Wright nor Kleiman had anything to do with the creation of cryptocurrency. “I’m convinced that neither one of these guys are Satoshi,” Bitcoin expert Arthur van Pelt told The Post. “[The real Nakamoto] didn’t want to be the leader. He wanted to hand it over to the community.”
Wright grew up in Brisbane, Australia, and says he has a PhD in computer science from Charles Stuart University in his home country.
“Craig has Aspergers and he is a little different from most people,” Calvin Ayre, a venture capitalist who first made his bones with the controversial online gambling site Bodog.com and is an investor in nChain, where, according to CrunchBase, Wright is a founder and chief scientist. “He’s a polymath who sleeps four hours a night and [in his sleep] listens to text books at four times the speed.”
In the early 2000s, Wright was working for BDO, an accounting firm in Sydney, Australia, when he was assigned to do a security audit for a different online gambling operation. That’s when he met the gambling site’s chief technology officer, Stefan Matthews.
“If he’s had a stressful day and needs to unwind, he reads a f–king text book. He is wired differently from anyone I know.”
Stefan Matthews on Craig Wright
“If he’s had a stressful day and needs to unwind, he reads a f–king textbook. He is wired differently from anyone I know,” Matthews told The Post. “He’s got dozens of technical certifications for things like networks, firewalls, penetration testing.”
Not long after they met, “He talked to me about digital gold and digital cash and he had eight or nine different concepts for them,” Matthews, formerly the CEO of nChain and now chairman of TAAL Distributed Information Technologies, recalled.
In 2008, Wright presented Matthews with a flash drive and asked him to download the document from it, with the hope that he would read it and offer his opinion on the work.
Stefan Matthews, Wright’s former employer, believe Wright is Nakamoto and says he has seen papers that show it to be true.
“It was a white paper [for Bitcoin, summing up the digital currency] that covered a lot of what we had discussed,” said Matthews. “The final, published version, in October 2008, has Satoshi’s name on it. In January 2009 [someone posing as Nakamoto] launched the Bitcoin code.
“Craig and Dave [Kleiman] first communicated in 2007 or 2008,” he recalled. “Craig told me that David helped him to edit the white paper. Craig has a problem with staying within word lengths.”
Kleiman was a soldier turned cop turned computer forensics expert. While working as an officer for the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, he was paralyzed in a 1995 motorcycle accident that left him confined to a wheelchair.
According to court documents, “Dave and Craig met in an online cryptography forum in 2003. Both men had a longtime interest in cyber security, digital forensics and the future of money.” They maintained correspondence over the years and “in 2007 they coauthored a paper on the mechanics of overwriting hard drive data.”
One year later, the court document confirms, Wright asked Kleiman to help edit the white paper. Then, it maintains, “for the next few months, Craig and Dave worked to get Bitcoin operational.”
The court document states that on Thanksgiving Day in 2009, Dave told his brother Ira “he was creating ‘digital money’ with a wealthy foreign man, i.e., Craig.”
Kleiman’s ex-wife Maria Frechette is not surprised if this was the case. “I don’t know if he invented [Bitcoin],” she told The Post. “But he was no dummy.”
As of Nov. 19, 2021, a single Bitcoin was valued at $58,000.
Reuters
During the first several years of Bitcoin, Nakamoto communicated regularly with a small group of crypto obsessives, via email and various message boards, but never on the telephone or in person.
Then, on April 26, 2011, Nakamoto disappeared — posting a farewell message to the community that concluded, “I’ve moved on to other things” — and has not been definitively heard from since.
Things were quiet for the next four years.
Wright had been keeping his alleged Satoshi identity on the down-low until December 2015. That’s when Wired and Gizmodo outed him.
“They had been sending Craig emails for weeks and wanted to do an interview with him,” Matthews said. “The advice was for Craig to do nothing because no one will break the story without Craig corroborating what they say. Of course that was wrong advice and they both did. Craig was torn up about that.”
A statue of Satoshi Nakamoto, a presumed pseudonym used by the inventor of Bitcoin, is displayed in Graphisoft Park in Budapest, Hungary.
Getty Images
But by May 2016, he had reversed course. Wright vowed to cash out some of Satoshi’s coins in order to prove that he was Satoshi. Then he backed out with a claim, according to Bitcoin magazine , that the transaction could reveal an early “security flaw … that would make it risky for him to move Bitcoin, exposing him to exploitation or theft.”
“I believed that I could put the years of anonymity and hiding behind me. But as the events of this week unfolded and I prepared to publish the proof of access to the earliest keys, I broke,” he wrote in an online post. “I do not have the courage. I cannot.”
Soon after, Matthews reached out to Gavin Andresen. The Massachusetts-based software developer became the “core maintainer” of Bitcoin’s open-source code — hand-selected by Nakamoto, though they never met — when the founder reportedly left the project in 2011.
Andresen is well versed in the workings of Bitcoin: Records of mined coins are stored in blocks on the so-called blockchain, a digital ledger that keeps track of freshly mined coins. He knew that getting into each block required a unique key — a string of numbers and letters — that would allow Bitcoin to be transferred out (or messages to be left) plus a so-called “public key” that allows anyone to look at activity inside a given block.
Gavin Andresen, Chief Scientist of Bitcoin Foundation, used to believe Wright was Nakamoto. Lately, though, he’s changed his mind.
Getty Images
Matthews invited Andresen to fly to London to meet Wright. At first, Andresen was skeptical, but, as he wrote on his website, “An initial email conversation convinced me that there was a very good chance he was the same person [i.e., Satoshi] I’d communicated with in 2010 and early 2011.”
Convinced, Andresen took Matthews up on his offer. Upon landing in London, Andresen told The Post, “I went to the basement of a hotel. Craig and I compiled code and did a whole bunch of geeky things. Then Craig signed a [unique] message — I think it may have been ‘Gavin’s favorite number is 11’ — in a block that Satoshi created. He had to have the private key to do it. That made me think Craig was Satoshi.”
In fact, Andresen was so convinced that he posted as much on his website: “I believe Craig Steven Wright is the person who invented Bitcoin … During our meeting, I saw the brilliant, opinionated, focused, generous — and privacy-seeking — person that matches the Satoshi I worked with.”
His opinion has since changed.
“Now,” Andresen told The Post, “I have my doubts. It’s possible that Satoshi got hacked and lost the key. It’s possible I was fooled — I was jet-lagged. The more that time goes on and we have not seen any movement in those early blocks, I have to ask myself why.”
After Kleiman passed away from unknown causes in 2013, Matthews said, Wright reached out to Kleiman’s family.
Bitcoin started in 2008.
AP
“From my recollection, when Craig found out that Dave passed away, it hit him really hard,” Matthews told The Post. “I understand he wrote an email to Dave’s [now deceased] father, saying that Dave was involved with Craig and that if Dave has encrypted drives, he may have mined Bitcoin and may have digital assets on them.”
Said Ayre: “He wanted Dave’s family to be proud of Dave, so he exaggerated Dave’s involvement.”
Doubter van Pelt finds it ironic that Wright’s claims are exactly what got him in hot water. “[Wright] made himself out to be Satoshi and now is paying a price for it. He gave Ira Kleiman the appearance of being Satoshi Nakomoto. It works both ways. Craig is shameless.”

>>> Weekend Papers Summary

Weekend Papers Summary 


NEW YORK TIMES
-The Kyle Rittenhouse case has served to highlight the United States’ divisions over guns. As groups debate the effect of Kyle Rittenhouse’s not-guilty verdict, the legislative stalemate over gun control shows no signs of changing. The acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse points to the wide berth given to defendants who say they acted out of fear.
-Gun purchases in the US are at record levels, and a spike in the firearm-related homicide rate during the pandemic has overwhelmed local police departments. 
-Mark Richards, Kyle Rittenhouse’s lead attorney, left, and Ben Antaramian, a Kenosha Police Department detective, examine the weapon that Kyle Rittenhouse used on the night of Aug. 25, 2020.
-A power struggle over cobalt: The quest for Democratic Republic of Congo’s cobalt, which is vital for electric vehicles, is stuck in a cycle of greed and gamesmanship between the US and China.
-Hunter Biden’s investment firm helped secure one of the world’s richest cobalt deposits in the DR Congo for a Chinese conglomerate.
-Nancy Pelosi’s pivotal role in the social policy bill reached beyond the House and into the Senate, as she cajoled key holdouts, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.
Former President Trump is tightening his grip on the Republican party as a haphazard kingmaker, threatening Republican incumbents while endorsing questionable candidates.
-The White House, F.D.A. and C.D.C. made announcements this week that signaled an expansive effort to control the pandemic. 
-While a rise in fentanyl overdose deaths shows the devastating consequences of the opioid’s spread, less is understood about how the drug has proliferated.
-An Indiana city has the most roundabouts in the country. They’ve saved lives and reduced injuries from crashes — and lowered carbon emissions.
-Generations have dreamed of removing the Claiborne Expressway. President Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill could eventually make that possible.
-India’s farmers have received foreign and domestic financial support, kept their camps organized and looked for ways to be seen while trying to avoid violence.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin faced tough questions about how countries were supposed to deal with a U.S. national security policy that constantly upends itself.

FINANCIAL TIMES
-Joe Biden’s battle to pass a $1.75tn package to enhance the social safety net and combat climate change moves to the thorny terrain of the US Senate, after clearing the House of Representatives.
-With inflation at multi-decade highs in the US, Germany and other advanced economies, the subject has shot to the top of the economic agenda so rapidly that what was a niche concern at the start of 2021 is now at the heart of politics. “For the first time in 30 years,” says Randy Kroszner, deputy dean of the Chicago Booth School of Business and a former Federal Reserve governor, “inflation has become the salient political issue.”
-Morgan Stanley veteran Colm Kelleher will replace Axel Weber and will work alongside CEO Ralph Hamers, who has pledged to speed up digitization.
-Visa hits back at Amazon over claims its fees are too high. The online retailer says it will stop accepting UK-issued Visa credit cards from next year.
-The European Commission presses Poland and Hungary on rule of law
Letters to Warsaw and Budapest are informal step towards a decision on whether to hold back EU funds. 
-European cities protest against fresh restrictions to stem the coronavirus pandemic. Dutch officials defend police opening fire against demonstrators in Rotterdam while tens of thousands gather in Vienna. 
-The big question for the future of AstraZeneca’s vaccine is: who will be buying it? The US has not yet approved it and the EU has a huge order with Pfizer stretching into 2023. Even its home country, the UK, has turned away from the AstraZeneca shot: while it has administered about 50m in total, safety reporting data estimates that in the three months to early November a maximum of 400,000 AstraZeneca shots were given.
-MiamiCoin: There is a long history of city-states producing their own money. But in the past that production came with monetary sovereignty — the ability to control quality and volume. Miami is launching a novel experiment: it is lending its name to a money it doesn’t control. Miami is looking into allowing city employees to take their salaries in bitcoin and Suarez has said he would like it to be able to collect taxes in bitcoin as well. This is all still an economic development plan — trying to encourage the use of crypto.-Carmakers are both struggling to match Tesla on electric vehicle technology and production. For years it had been assumed that the main carmakers that build millions of combustion engine cars a year could rapidly scale up their EV production — as soon as they nailed battery technology and enough consumers showed an interest. But forecasts for six big car groups out to 2024 indicate that Volkswagen is the only legacy carmaker on track to overtake Tesla for EV production. -Carlos Torres Vila, the head of Spanish bank BBVA, explains why his company has made a bet in Turkey agreeing to take full ownership of Turkish bank Garanti.-Big polluting nations have cast doubt on whether they would upgrade their emissions targets next year, after agreeing at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow to “revisit and strengthen” them in line with the Paris accord. 

NEW YORK POST
-Two lawyers who briefly worked on Rittenhouse’s case — and helped raise $2 million to help get him released from jail as he awaited criminal charges — want their cash back, but the now acquitted teen’s family is fighting the move.
- US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin vowed Saturday to both block Iran from securing nuclear weapons and counter its “dangerous use” of suicide drones throughout the Mideast.
“The United States remains committed to preventing Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon, and we remain committed to a diplomatic outcome of the nuclear issue,” said Austin during the annual Manama Dialogue in Bahrain.
-In a court case now unfolding in West Palm Beach, Fla., Ira Kleiman, the brother of the late computer-security specialist David Kleiman, maintains that his brother and computer scientist Craig Wright developed the original digital currency, bitcoin, credited to the Nakamoto pseudonym. 

(ZH) Bill Ackman Says We're In A "Classic Bubble" That's "Fueled By The Fed"

Bill Ackman Says We're In A "Classic Bubble" That's "Fueled By The Fed"

Well known hedge fund manager Bill Ackman is the latest to join the chorus of high profile Wall Street veterans to issue warnings about the state of the market.
Following cautious comments last week from Goldman Sachs' David Solomon, Ackman said this week that the market is in a "classic bubble" that has been created by the Fed's easy money policies.
Ackman also predicted that the Fed would have to tighten and raise rates to fight inflation, according to Reuters.
At a conference sponsored by S&P Global Ratings last week, Ackman said: "We are in a classic bubble which has been driven by the Fed."
"Every indicator is flashing red," he said, talking about rising prices across asset classes.
Ackman referred to inflation as the biggest risk for his hedge fund this year and predicted the Fed would have to raise rates soon.

"I think the Fed will be forced to tighten much more quickly," he said, noting that the Fed's current easy money policy isn't doing a great job of bringing people back into the workforce.
He predicted that recent price increases "may not be transitory" and, instead, could be the result of structural changes.
His comments came days after CPI numbers showed that prices in October were up 6.2% over the last 12 months.
Last month, after being invited to give a presentation to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Ackman suggested the Fed "taper immediately and begin raising rates as soon as possible."
Recall, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon also issued a warning last week. He said:
"When I step back and think about my 40-year career, there have been periods of time when greed has far outpaced fear -- we are in one of those periods," Solomon said during an interview at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore.
"My experience says those periods aren't long-lived. Something will rebalance it and bring a little bit more perspective. And given it feels like inflation is running above trend, chances are interest rates will move up and that will take some of the exuberance out of certain markets." he said.

FT : The unexpected surge in inflation, in charts

The unexpected surge in inflation, in charts
Trend is global, even in Asian countries such as China where consumer prices are not yet rising fast

High and rising inflation is fast becoming a global trend as the combination of surging energy costs, strong demand and supply chain disruptions continue to push up prices by more than economists expected only a few months ago.

In the US, Canada, the UK and the eurozone, consumer prices rose in October at their fastest pace inasmuch as three decades. In emerging markets such as Turkey, Brazil and Argentina, inflation rates have hit double digits.

Only in parts of Asia-Pacific, in countries such as China, Japan and Indonesia, is consumer price inflation still relatively subdued. But even there the inflationary trend is up, economists say.

“Generally speaking, inflation is running hot in countries where it slumped the most last year,” such as the US and Germany, said Sylvain Broyer, economist at rating agency S&P. It is also rising particularly fast in emerging economies, where currency depreciations have fed into higher local prices.


The inflationary surge has taken many economists by surprise. In some countries — such as the US, Canada, the eurozone, Brazil and Peru — inflation forecasts for this year have doubled in only a few months, according to Consensus Economics, a company that tracks leading forecasters.

“Economists have been caught out by a few things — energy prices, which are famously hard to forecast, and the persistence of demand for goods even as economies have reopened,” said James Pomeroy, global economist at HSBC.

Most economists still expect inflation to fall next year from current levels as the effect of one-off price increases fade away. However, they also expect inflation to last longer than previously thought, and are revising up their forecasts for 2022.

“Bigger inflation forecast changes became necessary across all regions,” said Christian Keller, economist at Barclays.


To keep things in perspective, the rise in consumer prices is nowhere near the levels reached in the 1970s and early 1980s, when annual inflation peaked at more than 15 per cent across the OECD’s 38 member countries.

Even so, the clear trend is of a sharp upward swing, which will hurt consumer pocket books and may slow economic recovery.

“Elevated inflation will strain household budgets and weigh on growth,” said Moody’s managing director Elena Duggar, adding it could also trigger food price controls and mandated wage increases in emerging markets.


The one exception to the general pattern is the Asia-Pacific region. There, largely thanks to weak domestic demand and stable currencies, consumer prices as a whole are expected to rise by less than 2 per cent this year. In Japan, prices are stagnating after falling for most of the year. 

Consumer price “inflation in Asia-Pacific isn’t that high,” said Ben May, global economist at Oxford Economics. That is even the case in China, where companies have absorbed a 13.5 per cent spike in producer prices rather than pass the higher costs on to consumers.

However, even there the number of countries with rising inflation grows almost daily.

As of September, about two-thirds of the 100 countries and regions that Consensus Economics tracks are expected to have inflation of 2 per cent or more this year. A few months ago, less than half were forecast to breach that level. Similarly, the number of countries forecast to have high inflation next year is rising rapidly.


One of the main factors pushing up prices generally is the surge in energy costs.

Across the OECD, consumer energy prices rose in September by an annual rate of nearly 20 per cent, their fastest increase since 2008 and five times the headline inflation rate. That in turn has fed through into other prices.

Food inflation also increased in September by one percentage point to 4.5 per cent, compared with the previous year.

But even if food and energy inflation are stripped out, OECD consumer inflation still doubled to 3.2 per cent over the same period.


“Higher energy prices are rippling through the economy — pushing up the costs of other raw materials and then feeding into those costs too,” said HSBC’s Pomeroy.

The big question is whether the current inflationary surge proves to be temporary or more permanent. That largely depends on whether the rise in prices leads to unstainable wages increases.

So far, though, there is very little evidence of that happening in “whatever metric you look at,” S&P’s Broyer said.

FT : Samsung investors look for guidance on plans for $100bn cash pile

Samsung investors look for guidance on plans for $100bn cash pile
First overseas trip by founding family scion Lee Jae-yong since prison release stokes acquisition hopes

Samsung’s most powerful executive is touring the US in what investors hope is a sign the company is looking to deploy its $100bn cash pile.

Third-generation heir Lee Jae-yong is on his first overseas trip since South Korean president Moon Jae-in agreed in August to his early release from jail on the grounds it was in the national interest.

The conglomerate’s cash reserves, which soared while Lee was behind bars for bribing Moon’s predecessor, put its potential capacity for megadeals on a par with SoftBank’s original Vision Fund, the tech investment vehicle.

Samsung, which last made a significant acquisition in 2016 with its $8bn takeover of US auto tech group Harman, has sat out of a deals boom that has reshaped the technology industry.

M&A in semiconductor companies totalled more than $200bn in the past four years, according to IC Insights, hitting a record $118bn in 2020 — although Nvidia’s $54bn deal to buy British chip designer Arm is now under threat from regulators.

“There has been a lot of M&A in the tech industry in recent years but Samsung was not on the list,” said Kim Young-woo, analyst at SK Securities. “This is something the top manager should be taking care of but Lee was busy dealing with his legal problems.”

Lee, who faces a separate trial over alleged financial crimes, has met the chief executives of vaccine developer Moderna and US telecoms operator Verizon and is expected to announce the US location for a new $17bn semiconductor facility to secure more American business.

Soon after his release, Samsung announced a $206bn three-year investment plan to expand its footprint in semiconductors, biopharmaceuticals, artificial intelligence and robotics.

The world’s biggest producer of memory chips and smartphones has said it is optimistic it can do a deal of a “meaningful size” within three years and that it is actively looking at fast-growing areas including AI, 5G and cars.


But investors fear the company has lost ground to rivals and lacks a clear growth strategy. Its cash pile hit $102bn in the third quarter, dwarfing US rival Intel’s $7.9bn and Taiwanese chip giant TSMC’s $31bn.

“With its net cash of more than Won100tn, shareholders want Samsung to return more of its cash if it is not going to use it for expansion,” said one industry official with knowledge of the company.

Samsung shares have fallen more than 10 per cent this year amid concerns about a projected oversupply in 2022 of Nand memory chips, which allow files and data to be stored without power, and Dram chips, which enable short-term storage for graphic, mobile and server chips. “They have too much cash and are not allocating capital efficiently,” said James Lim, an analyst at US hedge fund Dalton Investments.

“There are concerns that Samsung may fall behind in the memory race, while investors seem unconvinced that it can become a leading player in non-memory,” he added, referring to chips used for data processing.

Samsung declined to comment. But a person familiar with the company’s thinking said the group was confident it had created ample shareholder value.

Samsung’s ultra-cautious approach stems partly from Lee’s quest for stable management since he took control of the $357bn company in 2014.

The company’s bitter experience with deals, as well as concerns about potential antitrust issues, have also contributed to its hesitancy over large acquisitions.

Executives were burnt by their experience of Samsung’s takeover of AST in 1995, fund managers say, when it lost local talent in the struggle to integrate the US computer company into its own corporate culture. More recently, Samsung has struggled to turn round Harman’s sagging profitability.


Analysts say Samsung needs an acquisition in the foundry sector, the lucrative market for producing non-memory processor chips for other companies where it lags behind Taiwanese rival TSMC.

“It is very important for Samsung to acquire a non-memory company. Samsung is the global leader in memory chips but the non-memory market is much bigger,” said Paul Choi, head of research at brokerage CLSA in Seoul.

Investors are also concerned by the advances made by Chinese companies in the memory chip sector, which Samsung has dominated for decades.


In the realm of telecoms and AI, Samsung is likely to identify highly specialised tech companies that could help it develop its wireless networks and the interoperability of its consumer electronics products, according to people familiar with the company’s strategy.

But a Silicon Valley venture capital veteran, who has consulted on the sale of multiple tech businesses, told the FT that founders did not want to integrate with companies with conservative reputations like Samsung, further complicating its ability to reach deals.

“For a lot of founders, corporate VC is seen as the very bottom of the barrel, even when the corporate has a really big name in tech like Samsung,” he said.

“There is always the worry that you will not be aligned with the mother ship and that they haven’t really thought much about how they want to use your tech within their bigger picture.”

FT : HK regulators examine Rusal demerger plan

HK regulators examine Rusal demerger plan
Response to Odey complaint comes after Russian group’s second-biggest investor drops opposition to split

Stock market regulators in Hong Kong are probing plans by Russian aluminium producer Rusal to spin off its high-carbon smelters and refineries into a separate company that will be listed in Moscow.

The decision to examine the proposed demerger was triggered by a complaint from Odey Asset Management, according to emails seen by the Financial Times.

The London-based hedge fund believes a recent agreement between Rusal’s two biggest shareholders means they should not be allowed to vote.

If they are prevented from voting on the deal, it would hand a huge amount of influence to minority shareholders. Hong Kong-listed Rusal has a public free float of little more than 10 per cent according to some analysts and the demerger requires backing from 75 per cent of shareholders present at a special meeting.

Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing declined to comment.

Rusal announced the spin-off plan in May in a move that would allow it to focus on the fast-growing market for “green aluminium”.

The company is 57 per cent owned by EN+, the hydropower-to-metals group controlled by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Its second-biggest shareholder with 25.5 per cent is Sual Partners, a vehicle in which billionaires Leonard Blavatnik and Viktor Vekselberg are investors.

For much of the year, Sual has been at loggerheads with Rusal and EN+, calling for the appointment of a new board and the resumption of dividends. It has objected to the demerger and voted against plans for Rusal to be renamed AL+ at its annual meeting.

However, Sual this month dropped its opposition to the spin off after “further discussions with EN+”. The “alignment”, as EN+ called it, has rung alarm bells at Odey, which is concerned that an attempt could be made to buy out minority shareholders once the demerger is complete, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Rusal is worth $15.6bn — only $3bn more than the value of its 25.5 per cent stake in Russian metals miner Norilsk Nickel. At current prices, its value including net debt, adjusted for its stake in Norilsk Nickel, is about 3.5 times forecast earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, according to JPMorgan.

Odey’s Natural Resources Fund, run by Henry Steel, has told Rusal and its advisers that it would vote in favour of the deal but only if Rusal sets out a sustainable capital returns policy, the people said — a move it believes would help drive a re-rating of it shares.

Aluminium prices have risen more than 30 per cent this year following production cuts in China, boosting profits and cash flow at Rusal, which has a 6 per cent share of the global market. However, the company has again decided not to pay a dividend, focusing instead on reducing debt.

Odey holds no shares in Rusal but owns derivatives that give it the option to acquire a stake. Steel has used derivatives to agitate for higher bids in the takeovers of Acacia Mining and Sirius Minerals. His fund is up 20 per cent since its launch in 2019 and 30 per cent this year.

Rusal said it was not aware of any investigation by HKEX and that it had yet to publish any information concerning voting arrangements for the demerger.

“The case for demerger is clear and will create value for all shareholders,” the company said in a statement. “The two businesses will have a different trajectory and strategy to decarbonise their operations but they will share the same 2050 goal: net zero.”

EN+ declined to comment. Sual did not respond to a request for comment.

Steel said he had discussed his concerns with Rusal and the chair of EN+.

“We are grateful for the continued engagement with all stakeholders, particularly with the boards of EN+ and Rusal, to ensure that potential or perceived conflicts with minority shareholders are nullified,” he said.

Rusal’s spin-off plan comes after the EU launched a carbon border adjustment mechanism that will force importers of steel, cement, aluminium and fertiliser to pay the same carbon costs faced by European industry. The prospect of the levy has alarmed Russian businesses, which have said they would be the worst hit.